She was his best friend. And she led him to his death

[Zorro]

It was fifth period at Panorama High School when Brayan Andino’s best friend dropped into his class and asked if he wanted to cut school to smoke some weed.

They slipped out to a table and waited until no adults were looking to steal away. Brayan, a stocky 16-year-old who claimed membership in a gang he didn’t belong to and trusted people he shouldn’t, asked where they were going.

Lake Balboa Park, she proposed. If it sounded spontaneous to Brayan, it wasn’t. She would later testify that several of his 10th grade classmates had spent the previous week planning how to kill him, and that she, his closest friend, was the bait in the trap.

In a cramped juvenile courtroom in Sylmar, that friend and a second girl described how in 2017 they helped boys and young men affiliated with the MS-13 street gang coax Brayan to Lake Balboa Park, then into a car that carried him into the mountains above the San Fernando Valley, where he was stabbed and bludgeoned to death and thrown off a cliff.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-13/brayan-andino-ms13-murder-trial

[Karadeniz]

1. I can't read the whole article, but this defies comprehension... and this isn't the first time teens

Have plotted murder of a classmate and followed through. What's going on in their minds that they can do this?

[Susan Calvin]

2. My gut reaction is wanting to belong,

Only with the wrong people.

[TeamPooka]

3. used to walk my dog at Lake Balboa Park all the time when I lived near there.

So sad.