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A man recently living in St. Paul is among three people federally indicted in connection to the homicide of a man in Florida, which prosecutors announced Friday was related to the MS-13 gang.
The FBI arrested Hugo Adiel Bermudez-Martinez, 30, on March 12 at a residence in St. Paul’s Dayton’s Bluff where he was living with his family. He is charged with murder in aid of racketeering activity.
“These vicious and callous acts by MS-13 not only shattered lives but also undermined the safety and security of South Florida communities,” said Hayden O’Byrne, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, in a Friday statement.
But a stepdaughter of Bermudez-Martinez said Friday that he is innocent. She described him as a hard-working man.
On May 3, 2015, the body of a 22-year-old man was found in a vacant lot in Palm Beach, Fla. He’d been stabbed repeatedly in the face, neck, torso and groin, and also shot in the head, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Florida.
Law enforcement linked that man’s killing to January and October 2015 murders in Oakland Park, Fla., along with a body found in a makeshift grave in May 2021, also in Oakland Park. Investigators “pieced together evidence showing that MS-13 was responsible for the four homicides,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
Six people were federally charged in July 2022 and have been convicted of murder in aid of racketeering activity. One of the men, Andy Tovar aka “Fearless,” was described by federal prosecutors as an MS-13 gang leader who approved of the murder of one victim and participated in the Palm Beach murder by shooting the victim in the eye. He’s been sentenced to life in prison.
Another man, Wilson Tirado-Silva aka “Sombra,” “was a local MS-13 leader responsible for growing the gang in South Florida,” the statement from federal prosecutors said. “He took MS-13 recruits on kills as part of gang initiation.” Two other men “committed the murders to gain gang membership credit.”
Last month, three more people — including Bermudez-Martinez, aka “Blue” — were charged in connection to the 2015 Palm Beach killing. They are all in federal custody. The mandatory minimum sentence for the three men, if convicted, is life in prison.
An attorney for Bermudez-Martinez wasn’t listed in the Florida federal court file as of Friday morning. Bermudez-Martinez has been in custody since his arrest and has appeared in federal court in Minnesota about being transferred to Florida; the attorney who represented him in court couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Friday morning.
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