A woman who was murdered by members of the MS-13 gang was beaten with a baseball bat then hacked to death with machetes before police discovered her body wrapped in the trunk of a car during a traffic stop, authorities said.
The 31-year-old was killed just seven days after she obtained an order of protection against her boyfriend, Anander Henriquez, 28, an MS-13 gang member.
Her boyfriend wasn’t charged in the murder. It isn’t clear if he directed his fellow gang members to go after her after she’d reported him for choking her on April 9.
Authorities found the body of the woman, Nazareth Tamer-Claure, 31, in the trunk of the vehicle as it was headed toward the Queens-Long Island border Wednesday, the Daily News reported.
Police had pulled over the car after they observed a large, wrapped object – which they later discovered was the body – being placed in the trunk. They tailed the car after it left a parking lot.
Nazareth Tamer-Claure was found dead inside the trunk of a car in Long Island, New York, last Wednesday. She is the mother of an 8-year-old
Nazareth Tamer-Claure was attacked with a baseball bat and then hacked with machetes
Tamer-Claure, the mother of an eight-year-old boy, had gone to the police after Henriquez, who is homeless, choked her during an incident April 9. It’s not clear what’s happened to the boy.
According to Queens Assistant District Attorney Joseph Grasso, MS-13 member Rigel Yohairo, 20, struck Tamer-Claure with a baseball bat. Fellow gang members Allan López, 22, and José Sarmiento, 21, then hacked the woman with machetes until they killed her.
All three suspects have been charged with murder, criminal possession of a weapon, concealment of a human corpse and tampering with evidence.
A fourth suspect, identified as Rodolfo López, was accused of concealing a body and altering evidence.
Henriquez was not at the scene of the murder; however, he was detained Thursday on assault charges.
He had also attacked Tamer-Claure outside a bank on January 17. An incident report indicated he punched her multiple times and then bashed her over the head with a metal stick.
In March, Henriquez pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and was given a conditional discharge.
Nazareth Tamer-Claure leaves behind an eight-year-old son
The suspects were spotted by the police leaving the empty lot in the Queens neighborhood of Far Rockaway.
The men had placed the wrapped body into the trunk of a vehicle and took off for Long Island before they were stopped on the Nassau Expressway in Inwood.
A search of the vehicle led cops to Tamer-Claure’s body in the trunk.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, the murder suspects had been under investigation for a string of violent incidents in Queens, New York.
DHS told DailyMail.com it couldn’t immediately comment on the immigration status of any of the suspects.
The MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, was founded in Los Angeles between the 1970s and 1980s to provide protection for immigrants from El Salvador from rival gangs.
Its presence quickly spread to El Salvador as many members were deported from the US, thus expanding the MS-13 influence to neighboring countries in Central America.
The notorious street gang throughout the years expanded across the United States, entrenching itself in New York, New Jersey, Texas, Mississippi and Virginia.
Former President Donald Trump made the MS-13 a focal point of his administration’s hard-line immigration stance before he was elected.
During a May 23, 2018 appearance in Bethpage, Long Island, Trump defended himself from criticism from Democratic leadership after he compared previously the gang to ‘animals.’
‘I called them animals the other day and I was met with rebuke,’ Trump said. ‘They said, “They’re people.” They’re not people, these are animals and we have to be very, very tough.’
