Criminals next door

What's the nation's biggest domestic threat? Salvadoran-inspired gang violence is heating up–and it may be coming to a town near you | Priya Abraham, Jamie Dean, Lynn Vincent

Edin Aldana strode through the parking lot of an apartment complex in Charlotte, N.C., on a hot July night toting a 20-gauge shotgun under his arm. As he walked around the side of a green Jeep Cherokee with two men inside, Mr. Aldana fired a warning shot into the air. The next two shots found the head and chest of Jose Nunez, a 20-year-old rival gang member who Mr. Aldana says threatened to kill him. Mr. Nunez died 40 minutes later.

That was in 2001. In a prison interview with local press Mr. Aldana, now 28, said he has no regrets about the cold-blooded murder. “He wanted to kill me,” Mr. Aldana explained. “I just shot him first.”

News travels slowly from the barrio. The coldly calculated murder of Mr. Nunez should have announced the presence of a burgeoning group of Hispanic gangbangers known as Mara Salvatrucha, or MS, or MS-13. Instead, it became a footnote. By 2003, after a movie-style shootout at a public park and a trail of at least 17 more murders, MS-13 became a front-page story in The Charlotte Observer. But for two decades MS-13 has spread across the country, infecting barrios from Los Angeles to Bostonówith little press.