Tren de Aragua gang members arrested in Utah for felony assault, suspected of ties to prostitution ring: law enforcement

Pablo Jose Fernandez Gil, 34; Raquel Yudith Fagundez Pitire, 36; and Kender Alberto Brieo Quijada, 18, have been charged with aggravated assault and aggravated burglary, according to Salt Lake County jail records.

They were each charged last week and are from Venezuela. Gil's record also states that he is a fugitive of justice and is a federal detainee. KSL reported that they are each subject to gang-enhancement penalties if the suspects are convicted.

The outlet reported that while Salt Lake Unified Police responded to a burglary in Salt Lake County on November 1, they saw Gil, Pitire, and Quijada in a vehicle and were able to take them into custody. A witness at the scene told police, "Gil told everyone he was going to kill them if they did not leave their girls alone" after he and the other gang members barged into a home with four people inside.

Charging documents stated that after they barged into the house Gil "proceeded to rack the handgun he was pointing at the victims and told them that he would kill them. (He) then told one victim he was marked because he had messed with (their) girls."

Police reported that Gil, Pitire and Quijada were looking for a woman at the time. Pitire is married to Gil, and according to charging documents, told the four victims that Gil was "trained in the Venezuelan military and that she was the girls' boss in Utah."

One of the victims told the trio of gang members to go away, per charging documents; in response, Pitire said that "she was going to kill him, rob everyone on the property and then shoot him." Two female victims from the home recounted to authorities later on that the gang members "control their lives" and everything that they do and that they "had been forced to do prostitution since arriving in Utah."

Police also learned that another woman "was being held at a local hotel” by the gang members and that “they had been assaulting her." Police later found the woman at the West Valley hotel who said that "Gil tried to shoot her, but it failed so he hit her with the gun on her right temple and then used the handgun to hit her on her left thigh," per charging documents.

The law enforcement source that spoke to TPM added that authorities are seeing a "big surge" of Tren de Aragua in Utah, and that a hot spot for the gang activity is occurring in West Jordan.