The Dominican gang Los Trinitarios has been connected to three murders in the capital, and has begun using local schools as recruiting grounds.
A feared Latin American gang known for committing violence all over the world is now believed to be operating in London, using local schools as recruiting grounds.
Los Trinitarios was formed by two Dominican prisoners at Rikers Island prison in 1989, and has since spread rapidly across the US, Central and South America and Spain. The gang has a reputation for violence, opting for machetes and bats over guns as these are more “personal” weapons.
They take their name from the Trinitiarios, the main Dominican revolutionaries who helped liberate the nation from the Republic of Haiti. The members, of which there are between 25,000-30,000 worldwide, often dress in green bandanas, and use the Dominican flag as a coat of arms.
The gang’s criminal activities span across drug trafficking, assaults, murder, kidnapping, robberies, pimping, prostitution, extortion, and illegal arms trafficking.
Now, after becoming one of the most feared gangs in the Spanish capital, it is believed the group has reached the UK, recruiting members from the Elephant and Castle area of South London.
The leaders recruit Spanish-speaking youth from schools into groups called “choirs”, after which they are under strict rules and organisation to carry out orders, often acts of violence in which death is an acceptable outcome.
Now, the gang has been connected to the murders of three Londoners: Gregory Catillo Volquez, Giovanny Rendon Bedoya, and Yeray Sanchez Morales.
Yeray-Sanchez Morales, 17, was the most recent death after he was stabbed with a bottle outside a McDonald’s on the Old Kent Road in south-east London
Metropolitan police officers used social media images and CCTV to link the suspects to the crimes.
Of the suspects were 18-year-olds Christofer Jesus Vasquez and Andres Tapia Londono, who were both convicted of manslaughter and jailed for four years each.
Isaac Ros Ramirez, 18, of Hackney, east London, and Juan Betancourt Hoyos, 21, of Haringey, were convicted of violent disorder and given community orders, while three 16-year-old boys were also handed community orders for a range of offences.
The prosecutor, Anthony Orchard KC, earlier secured convictions against five men who murdered Giovanny Rendon Bedoya during a ‘vicious’ onslaught in Walworth last April.
The men sliced off the 21-year-old’s fingertips before hacking him to death with machetes.
Angel Gonzalez Angulo, 19, Christian Batista-Gonzalez, 23, Brian Villada-Hernandes, 19, Zozoro Boizo, 21, and Joseph Jimenez, 22, denied murder but were all convicted.
Another murder victim, 36-year-old Gregory Catillo Volquez, suffered 22 stab wounds after being attacked on a street in north London on January 13 last year.
Benito Ramirez Kones, 20, and 22-year-old Carlos Akum Metumbe, of Spain, were convicted of murder alongside Italian national Luiggi Perelli Santana, 22.
They were sentenced to a total of 68 years in prison.
Originally from New York, Los Trinitarios have been known by police for years due to their public methods of maintaining order and punishing disrespect.
They quickly became one of New York’s major cocaine and heroin retailers, turning Manhattan high schools into “gang battlegrounds”.
Members need a sponsor to join, and once in, they receive a rule book, take an oath and swear to abide by the gang’s constitution.
Members pay $5 dues at mandatory weekly chapter meetings, funds that are used for bail, weapons, parties, drugs and prison commissary costs.
The meetings end with a Trinitarios prayer, with the members standing in a circle, heads bowed, arms crossed, holding hands.
The Met Police has not spoken about Los Trinitarios’ links to London, but after the arrest of a man in Barcelona who was convicted of one of last year’s three attacks in London, the Spanish interior ministry appeared to confirm its presence there.
The Spanish interior ministry said of the gang: “The Trinitarios youth group is currently one of the most active and violent groups nationwide”.
The gang gained notoriety in Madrid following a coordinated campaign to push back against another gang called Dominicans Don’t Play (DDP).
On January 14, 2023, one of their “choir” groups launched a coordinated attack against three young men sitting in the Cuña Verde del Ferrocarril park in Madrid, seriously injuring two of them with machetes.
The Spanish investigation saw the arrest of 12 people, seven adults and five minors, and seized machetes, ammunition and gang insignia during house searches.