Fairfax City Police announced this week that an arrest was made in relation to an October 29 attack in which two victims were violently assaulted by two individuals wielding machetes.
Raul Fernando Morales Chiguela, 39, of Fairfax, was taken into police custody on November 3, the department announced. He has been charged with two counts of malicious wounding and two counts of malicious wounding by mob. Morales Chiguela has been detained at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center, where he is currently being held without bond.
Authorities got wind of the attack after receiving a call from staff members at the Patient First at the 10000 block of Fairfax Boulevard. There, police discovered victims being treated with injuries to their hands and heads. Both individuals were then transported to Fairfax Hospital, where they were treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
The second machete-wielding assailant has not yet been publicly identified by police.
While department officials have yet to specify whether Morales Chiguela has any affiliation with MS-13, machete attacks have long been a calling card of the violent Salvadoran gang’s area membership.
Earlier this month, five members of MS-13, which is short for La Mara Salvatrucha, were sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping and murdering two adolescent boys over the course of August-September 2016.
In those two separate incidents, gang members Elmer Zelaya Martinez, Ronald Herrera Contreras, Henry Zelaya Martinez, Pablo Velasco Barrera, and Duglas Ramirez Ferrer reportedly lured the victims, ages 17 and 14, to Holmes Run Stream Valley Park in Fairfax County, where they restrained the adolescent boys before bludgeoning them more than 100 times with a machete, knives and a pickaxe, the Justice Department reported. Both victims were later buried in a pre-dug hole.
“Words alone are incapable of describing the tragedy and senselessness that mark this case,” Jessica D. Aber, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a DoJ release. “Mere proximity to MS-13 and its twisted code cost two unassuming teenage boys their lives. In the wake of their appallingly violent murders lie wrecked families and fear-stricken communities.”
Wayne A. Jacobs, the special agent in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office’s Criminal and Cyber Division, called this particular brand of brutality “the hallmark of MS-13.”
“The defendants kidnapped and murdered two innocent teenagers, shattering their dreams and stoking fear in the communities we live and work in,” Jacobs said. “This joint investigation demonstrates the FBI and our law enforcement partners’ refusal to tolerate violent gang members who terrorize our neighborhoods and ruthlessly murder rival gang members and innocent civilians.”
An investigation into the incident involving Morales Chiguela is ongoing, meanwhile. Anyone with knowledge of the October 29 incident is encouraged to contact Fairfax City Police detectives at (703)385-7907.
Feature image, stock.adobe.com
For more stories like this, subscribe to our News newsletter.
