Four reputed members of the vicious Venezuelan street gang “Tren de Aragua” are behind bars after a tense 8-hour standoff with cops in Texas following a violent $75,000 jewelry heist.
Dallas police said the migrant thugs followed the victim into her garage, pistol-whipped her and forced her into the Elsby Avenue home, where they made off with the valuables inside the woman’s Gucci bag on Sept. 21, WFAA-TV News reported.
Authorities later rounded up three of the gangbangers — Yean Brayhan Torralba, 20, Alberto Martinez Silva, 34, and Manuel Hernandez-Hernandez, 28 — but the leader of the crew barricaded himself inside a home as Dallas cops and the Irving Police Department SWAT team deployed outside, the outlet said.
Wilmer Colmenares Gonzalez, 27, held police at bay for hours before he was taken into custody Thursday.
Police used surveillance video from the woman’s garage and fingerprints from the scene in Northwest Dallas to identify the suspects and track them down, WFAA said.
According to Fox affiliate KDFW-TV, the migrants tied up the victim and threatened to cut off her fingers if she didn’t lead them to the pricey gems during the robbery.
Hernandez-Hernandez told cops he didn’t know his cohorts, and said he was told the crew was collecting money from a prostitute who owed the gang, according to police records reviewed by the station.
Tren de Aragua has fanned out across the US after sneaking across the border with Mexico among the millions of asylum seekers who have flooded the country since 2022.
They are luring desperate women into the nation, holding them hostage and forcing them to sell their bodies until they pay off exorbitant smuggling fees to the gang.
The gang has also laid down roots in the Big Apple, infiltrating city-run migrant shelters to run guns, drugs, robbery crews and sex trafficking operations, law enforcement sources contend.
Read the full article here
