Prosecutors claim that the two men accused of keeping a man hostage in his pickup truck on Long Island over the weekend were involved in a sex-fueled scheme that was perhaps connected to the murderous MS-13 gang.
Authorities claim that on Saturday in Jericho, Nassau County, Tylor Salmeron, 19, and Yonathan Hernandez, 23, two suspected MS-13 members, kept the 48-year-old man against his will, robbed him, and made death threats against him.
It was not immediately obvious what part the 16-year-old girl played in the scam, but she was also reportedly implicated.
According to a criminal complaint and police, the suspects first enticed the victim to a room at the Edgewood Motel “under the pretence of engaging in sexual conduct.”
Hernandez then attempted to stab the victim with a knife, but Salmeron struck him with a machete in the left shoulder and demanded money, according to the police.
The victim handed over $300, but that did not satisfy his attackers — who continued to strike him and grabbed his phone, wallet and car keys, according to the charging document.
They led him out of the room at knifepoint to the parking lot and forced him into the back seat of his Ford F150 truck, the complaint says.
Hernandez then sat in the driver’s seat and drove both suspects as well as the victim to a Chase Bank ATM, authorities said.
“They pretty much held [the victim] prisoner,” a police source previously told The Post. “They were trying to get money out of him. They had weapons, so who knows what they were thinking.”
The scheme unraveled at Cambridge Avenue and Warren Street in Westbury, authorities said.
Officers pulled over the Ford truck after it rolled through a stop sign, and officers noticed that one of the passengers — the victim — looked distressed, officials said.
“His face was like ‘Help me. Help me.’ He looked very distraught,” the police source said.
After everyone was ordered out of the vehicle, Salmeron began to run and threw a large machete hidden in his shorts onto the ground, authorities said.
