Another 15-year-old migrant tied to Tren de Aragua’s baby-faced “Little Devils’’ gang was busted Tuesday in the cowardly robbery of an autistic teen at the Staten Island Mall, law-enforcement sources said.
The punk gang associate also is being eyed in a “Little Devils” robbery attack on another teen in Lower Manhattan last week — when the thugs literally ripped a sneaker off the victim, sources said.
The boy was picked up by the NYPD in the morning and is the third person to be nabbed in the earlier May 5 Mother’s Day robbery that left a 16-year-old autistic victim battered and traumatized.
Already charged in the Mother’s Day mall crime was another 15-year-old whose exploits include more than a dozen arrests, with the notorious young criminal deemed the poster boy for the “Little Devils,” a k a “Los Diablos de 42,” or “The Devils of 42nd Street.”
The underaged crew is essentially a farm system for the vicious Venezuelan gang Tren, with members having snuck into the US with the wave of asylum-seekers that began flooding across the country’s southern border in 2022.
The gang recruited new members from inside city-funded Big Apple shelters — and spawned the troublesome “Little Devils” gang, which has largely dodged serious charges because they are minors.
In the May 5 assault, a mob of “Diablos” stormed through the Staten Island Mall wreaking havoc, including by ganging up on the disabled teen, attacking him and stealing his bag and $38, police said.
“It makes me sick these kids are still here,” the victim’s furious mom previously told The Post. “They should have been deported a long time ago. I had to keep my son home for a week because he was so scared.”
The gang-associated suspect busted Tuesday over the mall attack was charged with second-degree robbery — but is likely to get a slap on the wrist like his cohorts because of the state’s lenient juvenile justice laws, which refer underage minors to family court and release them without bail.
The suspect is also being eyed for a separate “Diablos” attack last week, during which as many as a dozen of the pint-sized punks allegedly attacked another teen and stole a $250 Christian Dior sneaker off him at knifepoint, according to cops and sources.
The NYPD has identified 40 members of the “Diablos” gang and lists about 30 others as “associates” who have been busted in dozens of assaults and robberies in the five boroughs.
Police said the gang’s cowardly MO is to mob vulnerable victims.
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