NEW YORK — A Bronx gang member has been sentenced to seven years in prison for his role in a brutal beating and torture of a new recruit he thought was gay, and two other men in separate, gruesome assaults in October 2010.
Nelson Falu, 20, was among eight members of the “Latin King Goonies” who tortured and beat two teenage boys and a 30-year-old man over the course of several hours in a Bronx home, while using anti-gay slurs.
Prosecutors say the gang members sodomized two of the men with a plunger, chained one to a chair, and used a cigarette lighter to inflict burns.
The gang believed that both teens had gay encounters with the older male.
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The 30-year-old victim was reportedly stripped, beaten and sodomized with a small baseball bat, according to police.
“Like many New Yorkers, I was sickened by the brutal nature of these crimes and saddened by the anti-gay bias that contributed to them,” New York mayor Bloomberg said at the time of the incidents. “The heartless men who committed these crimes should know that their fellow New Yorkers will not tolerate their vicious acts, or the hatred that fuels them.”
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Prosecutor Theresa Gottlieb told Bronx Supreme Court Justice Steven Barrett her office made the plea offer because the victims don’t want to relive “the nightmare” on the witness stand, reported The New York Daily News.
Falu was sentenced on Friday, Aug. 9.
