Michael told his girlfriend’s mother, Irma, that he was uncomfortable with the gang presence in the hallways at school. Wanting to be close to Fabiola and to remove himself from Brentwood, Michael transferred to Sachem High School East, in Farmingville, according to Irma, who asked to be identified only by her first name because she is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. He lived for a time in their home in Farmingville. (Fabiola and Michael eventually broke up but stayed friends, Irma said.)

Michael would discover that his new school had virtually the opposite ethnic makeup as his old school. Brentwood is 80 percent Latino. At Sachem, more than 80 percent of the student body is white. In the very obvious minority there, the Latino students tended to stick together, Irma said. On Michael’s first day of school, he met a boy named Alex Ruiz, who had recently arrived from El Salvador.

Alex would be with Michael and the other boys on the night they died. According to several people involved, Alex managed to escape from the woods, though attempts to confirm that with Alex, through text message, Facebook and phone, were unsuccessful. Much of the account of what happened that night is based on what Michael’s father and Irma said he told them.

According to Irma, Alex knew gang signs and taught them to Michael. But Michael insisted that he never wanted to join the gang. That was what he was escaping back home, he kept telling her.

It was through Alex that Michael and his cousin Jefferson hooked up that night with Justin Llivicura and Jorge Tigre, two other boys who lived across Suffolk County in the Ecuadorean enclave in Patchogue.

Image Jorge Tigre, 18, had come to the United States from Ecuador at age 10.

Jorge was the fourth of six children. His father had been deported from the United States to Ecuador because he was convicted of domestic violence against his mother, Bertha Ullaguari.