Police say they prevented a group of MS-13 gang members from abducting and killing a 16-year-old boy in Brentwood Wednesday. 

Two undercover detectives saw them trying to force the victim into a van and moved in with guns drawn, according to investigators.

Authorities identified the suspects as Jorge Bermudez Cedillos, 18; Lilliana Villanueva, 17; Oscar Fuentes, 18; Vidal Contreras-Ortiz, 18; and Miguel Rivera, 20. 

Authorities say the group was in a van harassing young Hispanic teens on the streets of Brentwood early Tuesday morning. Suffolk Police Commissioner and District Attorney-elect Tim Sini says in two of those incidents, the perpetrators assaulted an individual with a bat.

Sini says police then flooded the streets around Brentwood High School looking for the suspects and their green and white van. Then around 2 p.m. police say the detectives saw them trying to force a Brentwood High School student into the van at First Street and Third Avenue.

"They literally prevented a murder of a 16-year-old boy at the hands of MS-13," said Sini. 

Police say three of the five people they arrested are full-fledged members of the gang. Two others are associates. 

According to court documents, the defendants believe the victim was of the rival 18th Street Gang and said "we're going to take him somewhere private and beat him to death with the bats."

Police believe the group was looking to elevate their status within the MS-13 gang.

Sini says two of the suspects are in the United States illegally, and the three others have unaccompanied minor status. They were each charged with conspiracy to commit murder and pleaded not guilty at their arraignment in Yaphank. All five are being held on $500,000 bond.