Mexican president orders probe into murder of social media infuencer Valeria
- Last updated: May 16, 2025 | 13:38
Mexico's powerful security cabinet is investigating the murder of a young beauty influencer killed as she livestreamed a video on TikTok, President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Thursday.
Authorities say the death of Valeria Marquez, 23, is being probed as a possible femicide, the killing of women or girls for reasons of gender.
The brazen killing has sent shockwaves through a country that faces high levels of violence against women.
"An investigation is under way to first find those responsible and the motive behind this situation," Sheinbaum said in her regular morning press conference.
"Our solidarity goes out to her family," she added.
Sheinbaum said Mexico's security cabinet, staffed by senior ministers, is working to solve the murder case with prosecutors.
Marquez was killed on Tuesday in the beauty salon where she worked in the city of Zapopan by a man who entered and shot her, the Jalisco state prosecutor said. The prosecutor's office did not name a suspect.
The social media influencer appeared to be murdered by a hit man and expressed fear before being killed, prosecutors said on Thursday.
Nation shocked
The grisly murder of the 23-year-old Valeria Marquez on Tuesday ignited rumours about the motive behind her killing in a region that's been eclipsed by cartel violence in recent years.
Denis Rodríguez, a spokesperson for the Jalisco State Prosecutor's Office, provided new details on the killing on Thursday, but said prosecutors were still investigating the death of the model and beauty influencer with more than 113,000 followers on the social media app.
Rodríguez said that early on Tuesday afternoon, hours before the shooting, a masked man posing as a delivery driver arrived at the beauty salon on the outskirts of Guadalajara, accompanied by another man on a motorcycle. According to a woman in the salon, the men said they had a "very expensive" gift for Márquez that they had to deliver in person. When Márquez arrived and heard people were looking for her she expressed fear in her livestream.
"Maybe they were going to kill me," she said in the video minutes before she was killed. "Were they going to come and take me away, or what? I'm worried."
When the men returned, they asked if it was Márquez who was now in the salon, something that prompted prosecutors to believe that the men were hired assassins, Rodríguez said.
"The aggressor arrived asking if the victim (Márquez) was there. So it appears he didn't know her," Rodríguez said. "With that, you can deduce – without jumping to conclusions – that this was a person who was paid. It was obviously someone who came with a purpose."
Márquez was handed a stuffed animal and a bag of Starbucks coffee while she was on the livestream, and was shot in the head and the chest, collapsing on camera. TikTok has since taken down the influencer's account.
While it was still unclear who was behind the killing, the region is firmly controlled by one of the most powerful cartels in Mexico, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and Rodríguez noted murders by hired guns on motorcycles, often known as "sicarios," have become a common occurrence.
Rodríguez said that authorities were also investigating if the death was connected to the murder of a former congressman just hours earlier in the same area of Guadalajara, also carried out by two men on a motorcycle.
Agencies