MS-13 gang member found guilty of several murders in Northern Virginia

MS-13 gang member accused of killing at least 5 people in Northern Virginia found guilty

After a two-week trial in federal court, an MS-13 gang member was found guilty of killing multiple people in Northern Virginia. On Monday, jurors returned a verdict in less than four hours, finding Elmer Alas Candray guilty on 14 counts, including the murders of five people in Fairfax County between 2018 and 2022.

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA. – After a two-week trial in federal court, an MS-13 gang member was found guilty of killing multiple people in Northern Virginia.

On Monday, jurors returned a verdict in less than four hours, finding Elmer Alas Candray guilty on 14 counts, including the murders of five people in Fairfax County between 2018 and 2022.

Closing arguments began Monday morning in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, with jurors remanding the case just before 1 p.m., returning with unanimous guilty verdicts around 4 p.m.

Candray is 27 years old and from El Salvador. Several parts of this process were conducted in Spanish and translated.

Federal court documents describe gruesome killings that included stabbings, shootings, beheadings and discarding or burying of limbs.

RELATED: The trial of an alleged MS-13 gang member accused of committing six murders in Fairfax County is underway

The victims range in age from a 19-year-old Fairfax waitress who shot herself sixteen times in the face after making a social media video disparaging MS-13, to a 42-year-old gang member. Five of the victims were in Northern Virginia, one in Massachusetts.

Elmer Alas Candray, 27, from El Salvador. Photo via Rappahannock Regional Jail

FOX 5 extensively covered one of the deaths – that of 24-year-old Jose Guillen Mejia, a father whose body was found in 2019 in the woods off a hiking trail in Reston.

Fairfax County police did not believe at the time that his death was gang-related. But according to prosecutors, Mejia was simply the first person Candray and his associates saw in the woods, in an area they considered their turf, so they shot him multiple times and killed him.

Sentencing is scheduled for January 30, 2025.

U.S. Attorney Jessica D. Aber of the Eastern District of Virginia sent FOX 5 the following statement:

“This case is a stark reminder of the violence and disregard for human life inherent in the MS-13 criminal enterprise. Their deadly actions, from flooding our streets with dangerous drugs to the brutal murders through which they seek to impose their presence, will not go unchecked, their crimes will be subjected to the full attention and resources of this office and our law enforcement partners.”