A wannabe gangster who savagely killed a Queens teenager to gain entry into MS-13 has been sentenced to 45 years in jail.
Juan Amaya-Ramirez was just 20 years old when he and others assaulted, stabbed, and choked 17-year-old Andy Peralta in Flushing’s Kissena Park, mistakenly thinking he was a rival gang member and believing that killing him would earn them a spot in MS-13’s ranks.
The killer, known by the sinister nickname “Cadaver,” then took a selfie with MS-13 gang signs over Peralta’s damaged and lifeless body and repeatedly boasted about the crime later, according to prosecutors.
Judge Lashann DeArcy Hall blasted Amaya-Ramirez’s lawyer at Tuesday’s sentencing hearing in Brooklyn for seeking to downplay his client’s role in the savage murder, to which he pleaded guilty last year.
According to a sentencing request submitted last month, Amaya-Ramirez’s attorney, Richard Palma, said that he was “the least culpable of his codefendants” and that his attempts to choke Peralta were “half-hearted.”
“It is mind-blowing to this court that you could argue that, when that young man died of strangulation, and your client strangled him,” Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Lashann DeArcy Hall said Tuesday, the New York Daily News reported.
“He put his hands around his throat, and he strangled him to death,” she added — before handing Amaya-Ramirez a 45-year sentence, far more than the 30 years his defense had sought.
Amaya-Ramirez, now 28, used his then-17-year-old girlfriend, Leyla Carranza, to entice Peralta to the park with a false promise of a romantic encounter.
Instead, he and co-defendants Oscar Flores-Mejia and Juan Lazo Villa attacked Peralta and violently beat him as Amayra-Ramirez choked him, according to prosecutors’ sentencing memorandum.
Flores-Mejia poured dirt into the teenager’s mouth, stabbed him in the back with a kitchen knife, and sliced off his chest a crown tattoo that they mistook for a rival gang emblem.
They then snapped a selfie with Peralta’s bleeding and lifeless body, showing MS-13 gang signs, before leaving him face down in the soil.
A hiker eventually discovered his body.
“Of all the conspirators, [Amaya-Ramirez] appeared to take the greatest pride in the murder, repeatedly bragging about the killing to MS-13 members he met and showing off the photograph of Peralta’s mutilated body that he kept on his phone as a trophy,” prosecutors said.
“He used the murder to advance himself within MS-13, and to this day he has done nothing to move away from the gang.”
Amaya Ramirez and Flores-Mejia pleaded guilty to the murder in September 2024. Flores-Mejia is expected to be sentenced on December 18.
Carranza is currently serving a 22-year sentence for her involvement in the murders.
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