Women want charges dropped for their roles in Latin Kings indictments

• Reprints

Updated: March 3, 2012 11:37AM

Two Chicago women accused of helping Latin Kings members kill people in a rival gang in 2006 are asking that the charges be dropped.

Bianca Fernandez and Serina Arambula both filed motions in the U.S. District Court in Hammond to dismiss the charge of conspiracy to commit murder in aid of racketeering. The two were charged along with 21 other defendants last fall in an indictment that claimed most of the defendants had worked together to further the criminal enterprise of the Latin Kings street gang in Northwest Indiana and Chicago.

Although Arambul and Fernandez were not charged in the conspiracy, they are both accused of luring Edward Delatorre and Antoine Lacey to a spot on the far south side of Chicago on Nov. 26, 2006. The indictment claims they were working with other co-defendants, who showed up once the two victims arrived and shot at them. Delatorre died, although Lacey was able to swim away in Lake Michigan to safety.

Fernandez claims in her motion that she was 17 at the time of the crime and that prosecutors haven’t followed proper procedures in charging a juvenile. A response from prosecutors, however, say law allows for people to be charged for a crime they committed when they were a juvenile as long as they are older than 21 when they are charged. She was 22 when she was charged last fall.

Arambula’s motion says that two counts, conspiracy to racketeer and conspiracy to commit murder, are actually charged in her one count, which isn’t allowed by law. Prosecutors responded in a filing that the count charged just conspiracy to murder.