Alejandro Enrique Ramirez Umana has an unfortunate claim on history. He is the first member of the MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, gang to be sentenced to death under the federal system of capital punishment, according to the Justice Department.
Prosecutors and FBI officials say the Umana investigation, which took them from North Carolina to California to El Salvador, is a model for how federal authorities will attack a growing gang threat that is leaching into smaller cities across America's heartland.
Umana is only 25. But over the course of his relatively short life, he allegedly killed five people in his role as a traveling evangelist for the MS-13 gang.
For the past few months, Umana has been living on federal death row in Indiana. Federal prosecutor Jill Rose helped put him there. "He murdered two men in a very busy restaurant in Greensboro, N.C., on a Saturday night. It was a few weeks before Christmas. He and some other gang members were having dinner in this restaurant," Rose says.
Two brothers who did not belong to a gang were eating nearby. They exchanged words with Umana. Then, Rose says, things went south.
"Mr. Umana stood up, pulled a Ruger 45 semi-automatic pistol out of his waist and blasted away there in the middle of this busy restaurant. He killed our two victims, continued to shoot as he backed out of the restaurant," Rose says.
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