Venezuelan influencer who criticized gangs and police shot dead during TikTok livestream
Venezuela's Ministry of Public Safety said in a statement on Instagram that influencer Gabriel Jesús Sarmiento died in the city of Maracay.
Sarmiento often criticized criminal groups and alleged corruption in law enforcement through his content online, and the ministry added that his death came shortly after he reported 'threats made against him by members of the GEDOs (Organized Crime Structured Groups, in Spanish) and alleged police officials.'
Maracay is the capital of Aragua, the region from which the notorious Tren de Aragua gang takes its name, though there is no known connection between the TikToker's death and the criminal group.
CNN has reached out to police in Aragua for comment.
The ministry also said it assigned the 69th Prosecutor's Office Against Organized Crime to 'investigate, identify, and prosecute' those responsible for Sarmiento's death.
In a recording of Sarmiento's livestream viewed by CNN, a woman can be heard screaming offscreen, while a man asks her why she is yelling.
'What happened, what happened?' shouts the man in the recording, followed by a heavy burst of gunfire.
'They shot me!' the man then screams. The video ends with the image of two unidentified armed men. Seconds later, the livestream stops and the video ends.
Sarmiento's death comes just over a month after another Latin American influencer was killed while livestreaming. Mexican beauty influencer Valeria Marquez was shot and killed in a salon in Jalisco in May, sparking outrage over high rates of femicide in the region.
Just days before Marquez's death, another woman – a mayoral candidate in the state of Veracruz – was shot dead, also during a livestream, alongside three other people.
CNN is making efforts to contact Sarmiento's family, as well as Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab, for further information.
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'And the locks will break.' Men dressed in black waited for the detainees on a plane set to fly to Venezuela. Detainees would later learn that Maduro had sent officers of the SEBIN, his feared secret police, usually used to detain or disappear his political opponents. Before being reunited with their families, one detainee said, they were told to record a video thanking the Venezuelan government. He said he was warned that if he fled again and was deported back, he could be charged with treason. The detainee spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the Maduro government. Several of the men, who had once fled the authoritarian country, said they were genuinely grateful to Maduro for negotiating their release when it seemed no one else would. Still, some said they'd leave for the U.S. again, perhaps once Trump leaves office. Not Molina. He doesn't think he could do it again, he said, 'having lived through that.' 'The American Dream,' he said, 'became a nightmare.' Ana Vanessa Herrero, Sarah Blaskey, Razzan Nakhlawi and Monika Mathur contributed to this report. Maps by Laris Karklis. Diagrams by Aaron Steckelberg.
