MDC Brooklyn jail inmate tried to smuggle scalpel blades in bag of Doritos: Feds
Angel Villafane, who's accused of being a member of the 'Valentine Ave. Crew' in the Bronx, was indicted last week for the October attempt to bring the scalpels into the troubled Sunset Park jail.
He slipped the scalpels into his shirt — and when correction officers strip-searched him he tried to swallow the blades, prosecutors said at his arraignment in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Villafane, 40, has been locked up since January 2021, when he was arrested on federal firearm possession charges in Manhattan in connection with a Bronx shooting.
He's since been charged alongside 15 other gang members in a March 2024 superseding indictment, implicating him in two non-fatal shootings, one of which brought him a murder-for-hire charge.
The feds say Villafane paid a co-conspirator in July 2020 to lure a victim to a spot in Manhattan where he tried to kill him over a drug debt.
The second shooting took place in January 2021, when Villafane ambushed a man coming out of his apartment in a building on Second Ave. and E. 97th St. in Manhattan, Manhattan federal prosecutors allege.
Villafane told the victim, 'What's up now,' then pointed a gun at him as the man begged for his life, according to court papers. Villafane raised the gun and shot the victim in the neck, then advanced on him but ran off when a relative of the victim opened the apartment door, the feds allege.
Villafane pleaded not guilty in Brooklyn Federal Court on the smuggling charges Tuesday and returned to MDC Brooklyn. He could face up to five years on contraband charges and up to life in prison in his Manhattan case.
His lawyer did not return a message seeking comment.
MDC Brooklyn has for years been plagued by violence, medical mistreatment of inmates and dire living conditions. On Feb. 22, Karl Jordan, who is convicted of killing Run-DMC icon Jam Master Jay in 2002, was stabbed inside the jail while awaiting sentencing.
Last summer, the jail saw two fatal stabbings less than six weeks apart. And in a caught-on-video April 27 attack, three MS-13 members stabbed a man 44 times before a lone correction officer intervened.
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