The leader of a Northern Virginia gang has been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a fellow gang member who a total of seven men stabbed to death and then decapitated.
Douglas Cerritos was just 18 years old when he ordered the slaying of Gerson Adoni Martinez Aguiar in 2014 in Fairfax County.
Cerritos and other MS-13 gang members told Martinez Aguiar that he would receive a beating for breaking gang rules. They stabbed and beheaded him.
Then, they buried him a shallow grave. Cerritos was the leader, prosecutors said.
Federal law requires a mandatory life sentence, though defense lawyers argued Friday that Cerritos should be considered a juvenile because he turned 18 only a month before the murder.
Cerritos is the last of several gang members to be given a life sentence for the slaying in federal court in Alexandria.
A total of 13 defendants were charged for a series of three murders and one attempted murder in Northern Virginia in 2013 and 2014.
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Aguilar was in trouble with fellow gang members because he owed them $600 from drug sales and was accused of having sex with another member's girlfriend, The Washington Post reported.
