Mexican TikTok beauty influencer shot dead on livestream
Valeria Marquez, known for posting beauty and lifestyle content for her 200,000 followers, was at her Blossom the Beauty Lounge salon in western Guadalajara in Jalisco state on May 13 when the incident occurred.
The shooter reportedly rode up to the salon on a motorcycle before entering the building on the pretext of giving Marquez a gift, but instead opened fire.
In the livestream Marquez is seen talking to the camera and showing off a pink stuffed-animal pig.
Moments before her death, she is seen looking up and saying: 'They're coming', before a voice off-camera asks: 'Hey, Vale?'
Marquez responds: 'Yes,' before muting the sound on her phone.
The footage then shows her clutching her ribcage and falling backwards in her seat as she was shot in the chest and head.
The livestream ends with an unidentified woman picking up her phone.
Jalisco state authorities said that she had no vital signs when medics arrived.
Marquez told her followers earlier in the livestream that someone had come to the salon before she arrived to give her an 'expensive gift'. She had reportedly looked concerned.
Authorities have not named a suspect, but police said that her murder is being investigated as a potential feminicide – the killing of women and girls on the basis of gender, which has become a growing problem in Mexico.
Several days earlier, a female mayoral candidate in the state of Veracruz on the east coast was shot dead during a livestream, alongside three other people.
Violence has been a major problem in Jalisco, in which the New Generation Jalisco Cartel (CJNG), a drug gang known for extreme and often public violence, has a heavy presence.
Hours before Marquez's shooting, former congressman Luis Armando Córdova Díaz was shot dead at a nearby café in Jalisco.
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