MS-13 hits Vietnam vets' memorial again

Authorities now investigating presence of violent gang
Posted: January 8, 2008 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com

Authorities in New Haven, Conn., have launched an investigation into the establishment of the radically violent MS-13 street gang in their city after a second case of apparently gang-related vandalism within a week.

According to reports from WTNH-TV, part of the effort may be to set up surveillance cameras at a Vietnam memorial that has been vandalized twice in just days.

"You don't like to have a camera out here where people come and pay respects but certainly you don't want to have something like this to happen to something so meaningful," a New Haven spokesman, Rob Smuts, told the television station.

The MS-13 graffiti on the Vietnam memorial had appeared first only days earlier, when spray-painted "Kill whites MS 13" defaced the memorial at Long Wharf, Conn., the station reported.

"This irks me. This hurts me deep to my heart," Vietnam Army veteran Emery Linton Sr. told the station then. Linton, who served in Vietnam from 1969 to 1972, noted he lost friends there and called the mess on the memorial a slap in the face to veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

"People here respect these names. They gave their lives for everything, for the freedoms they have," Linton said.

As WND reported, the El Salvador-based MS-13 operates in 44 U.S. states, according to the FBI.

WND reported as early as 1995 the gang reportedly was meeting with representatives of al-Qaida and smuggling operatives into the United States from Mexico.