Karla Jackelin Morales (Harris County DA’s Office) Jose Alfonso Villanueva (KPRC screenshot)
A 21-year-old woman in Texas will spend several decades behind bars for luring a man to be ambushed and killed in a vicious MS-13 gang attack during which he was hacked with a machete before being fatally shot.
Harris County District Court Judge Nikita V. Harmon on Friday ordered Karla Jackelin Morales to serve a sentence of 30 years in a state correctional facility in connection with the horrific 2018 murder of 24-year-old Jose Alfonso Villanueva, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
Before being sentenced, Morales pleaded guilty to one count of murder.
Morales was the last of six people arrested and charged with the deadly attack on Morales when she was taken into custody in 2021. Following her arrest, Morales posted $60,000 bond and was released from detention. However, on Oct. 20, 2021, two days after Francisco “Psycho” Amadeo Flores-Salazar, one of five MS-13 members to take part in the attack, was sentenced to 45 years in prison for the attack on Villanueva, Salazar cut off her ankle monitor and went on the run.
“This defendant jumped bail in 2021 to escape the consequences of her actions, but she was re-arrested and, on the eve of trial this week, pleaded guilty for what she did,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a news release. “This was a premeditated and planned out attack, and we have now been able to get justice for the victim’s family.
She was located nine months later, hiding out in Houston, Texas and arrested.
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As previously reported by Law&Crime, Morales lured Villanueva on the evening of July 29, 2018, to a field near Lewis Elementary School in the community of Spring, Texas, under the guise that they would be smoking marijuana as a belated birthday present for the victim. But when they arrived, he was viciously ambushed by five gang members who had been lying in wait.
The gang members specifically targeted Villanueva because he bad-mouthed the criminal organization in a rap song, prosecutors said. Morales claimed that she told some men planning that ambush that she did not want to carry out the attack anymore, but they told her it was too late.
Flores-Salazar told authorities he slashed and hacked the 24-year-old victim at least twice before other men fatally shot him. He also told authorities that Villanueva belonged to a rival gang.
“This woman knowingly lured an innocent man to be murdered by five MS-13 gang members in the most brutal and depraved manner you could imagine sending shockwaves and fear throughout the Houston community,” Robert Kurtz, the Acting Special Agent in Charge with Homeland Security Investigations in Houston said in a statement following the sentencing hearing, according to a report from Houston, Texas NBC affiliate KPRC-TV. “By working in conjunction with our local law enforcement partners and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, we were able to hold all of the individuals responsible for this horrifying tragedy accountable and hopefully bring some closure to the victim’s family.”
Assistant District Attorney Jason Sanchez, head of the DA’s Organized Crime Division, reportedly said Morales’ sentence should act as a “cautionary tale” for people considering joining a gang.
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