The violent gang known as MS-13 has brought its terror and recruiting tactics to a middle school in Maryland, The Washington Post reported.
Members of Mara Salvatrucha, the notorious El Salvadorian street gang also known as MS-13, have infiltrated an overwhelmingly Hispanic school, William Wirt Middle School in Riverdale, Md., to sell drugs, draw pro-MS-13 graffiti, and recruit immigrants from Central America who have fled their respective countries because of the brutal gang. School teachers estimate about a dozen members are there now, The Post reported.
Fights between gang members and others are now an almost daily occurrence there and the police have been called there at least 74 times in the 2017-18 school year, according to The Post.
“We now have two to three fights per day,” said a school instructor who, like all of the sources The Post cited, requested anonymity for fear of losing their jobs and potential threats against their lives. “At this point, it’s completely out of control.”
School officials deny there is a gang problem in the school. “The principal is aware of concerns about gangs in the community, but has not experienced any problems in school,” school spokesperson John White said.
Despite administrators denying that there is a gang problem in the school, teachers and students’ parents told The Post they fear for their school’s safety.
“Teachers feel threatened but aren’t backed up. Students feel threatened but aren’t protected,” one educator said. “The school is a ticking time bomb.”
One student, an eighth-grader, said she was raped in the fall by an MS-13 gang member. “If someone doesn’t do something soon,” said the girl’s father. “There’s going to be a tragedy at that school.”
MS-13’s motto is “rape, control, kill” and the group is referred to as “animals” by President Donald Trump. Its recruitment of teenagers in middle school appears to be a part of a larger, more disturbing trend, as The Daily Caller reported in 2015. (RELATED: New Poll Suggests Calling MS-13 Members ‘Animals’ Is Not A Problem)
Similar to the case in the Maryland middle school, there was pro-MS-13 graffiti near Trailside Middle School in Loudoun County, Va. The middle school is about eight miles away from a murder that occurred at Park View High School in Sterling, Va.
Danny Centeno-Miranda, a 17-year-old Park View high schooler at the time who was in the country illegally, was allegedly shot and murdered by three other illegal immigrants — 20-year-old Henry Dominguez-Vasquez, 18-year-old Juan Aguirre-Zelaya, and another unnamed 17-year-old.
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