HollyMatkinWashington, DC – Police released the videotaped confession of a teenage girl on Monday, after the MS-13 gang member pleaded guilty to the murder of a 15-year-old girl who she believed lured her boyfriend to his death.
Venus Romero Iraheta, 18, was only 17 years old when she stoically confessed to killing Damaris Alexandra Reyes Rivas, WTTG reported.
She was charged as an adult, and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, abduction, and criminal street gang participation on Monday.
Iraheta told investigators that she believed Reyes Rivas played a role in the Jan. 12, 2017 murder of Iraheta’s boyfriend, MS-13 gang member Christian Sosa Rivas.
In retaliation, she arranged to have Reyes Rivas kidnapped from her Maryland home on Jan. 8, 2017, WRC-TV reported.
The teen was taken to the woods at Lake Accotink Park in Virginia, where MS-13 members were waiting for her.
“I grabbed her by the throat and I couldn’t help but hit her,” Iraheta said during the Feb. 14, 2017 interrogation.
“I asked her if at any time she had something to do with Christian,” Iraheta recounted. “She said yes. I said, ‘I’m not going to forgive you’ … I told her, ‘I warned you not to mess with me. I told you not to mess with Christian. I told you to stay away from him or you would see what would happen. You don’t play with me.’ So I hit her. I kept hitting her. Until they stopped me.”
The group forced Reyes Rivas to walk through the snow without shoes or a shirt. Iraheta said she then cut a tattoo off of the girl’s hand – a tattoo that had been given to her by Iraheta’s dead boyfriend, FOX News reported.
Through a translator, Iraheta recounted her final promise to Reyes Rivas.
“’You’re going to remember me until the day we see each other in hell. Don’t forget my name,'” she said. “And I told her my full name and I told her my nickname … I told her to ‘never forget who I was.’ I told her ‘someday, we were going to see each other again.’”
The interrogator then asked Iraheta what she did next.
“I killed her,” she said unemotionally. “With a knife.”
Iraheta said she stabbed Reyes Rivas thirteen times.
“I think it was 12 here,” she said, as she motioned towards her stomach. The woman then pointed to her neck. “And the thirteenth was here,” she said. “I left the knife in her neck,” Iraheta recounted.
Investigators said two other participants used a sharpened stake and stabbed the dying teen in the neck, before they drug her body under an overpass, FOX News reported.
They left her lying face down in a puddle, and concealed her body with railroad ties.
Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh said that the brutal attack was recorded by the group, who planned to send the video to El Salvadorian MS-13 leaders for possible promotions within the gang, WRC-TV reported.
“It’s kind of like a trophy they take,” Morrogh said. “They show it off to the other gang members.”
Nine other people were charged in connection with Reyes Rivas’ murder, and so far, seven have been convicted.
Iraheta faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, plus 20 years.
She is scheduled to be sentenced on May 25.
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You can see the video of the confession below: