Valeria Márquez, Tiktok -Influencer, shot dead during the live stream in Mexico

A 23-year-old influencer was shot on Tuesday and killed in a beauty salon in Jalisco, Mexico, while they Tiktok Livestream, according to the office of the public prosecutor.

The influencer, Valeria Márquez, worked in the Salon in Zapopan, part of the metropolitan area of ​​Guadalajara, and flowed to some of her 113,000 followers, when two men said on a motorcycle outside, said. One of the men entered the salon with a mask, looking for Mrs. Márquez.

“He immediately asked her:” Are you Valeria? “Said Mr. Rodríguez. She replied, “Yes.”

The man then took out a gun and shot her before he jumped on the bike and fleeing.

The Tiktok account of Mrs. Márquez seemed to have been removed on Wednesday, but a video of the dead circulating online, confirmed by the office of the public prosecutor, Let her sit in a chair in the salon, with a pink stuffed pig on her lap, before looking away from the camera. Moments later she grabs her chest and stomach before she sinks in her chair. The face of another woman is then seen before the video cuts out.

When researchers later arrived: “She was still sitting in the chair, where she was surprised, with that doll, the small pig, there in her arms,” ​​said Mr. Rodríguez.

The office of the public prosecutor said it had no suspects, but it was surveillance images and combing her social media for instructions about who the attackers could be. The men, who visited the store earlier in the day and said they were trying to deliver a gift for Mrs. Márquez, probably did not know her personally because they had to ask her by name, Mr. Rodríguez said.

“They had no personal relationship,” he said. “He was just her executioner.”

The office of the public prosecutor said it was investigating crime as a possible ‘femicide’, a kind of gender -based violence against women. Such attacks are often unpunished in Mexico.

Mrs. Márquez’s death was the last reminder of the increase in violence against women in the country.

The murder took place days after Yesenia Lara Gutiérrez, a mayor candidate in the state of Veracruz, was shot together with three others during a campaigns on Sunday – an attack was also imprisoned on a live stream.

A recording of that current, posted on the Facebook page of Mrs. Gutiérrez and was still online from Wednesday evening, shows her to shake the hands of residents and march through the street with her supporters before a series of gunshots ring. Moments later, some of her supporters can be shouted, while others run out of the scene before the camera gets dark.

Mexico has established a number of local and federal laws in recent years to combat gender-based violence against women, but the country still has one of the highest femicid percentages in the world.

The violence is the product of a “Machismo” culture, built -in sexism and institutions that oppose their own responsibility for gender -based violence, said Paulina García -Vel Moral, university teacher Sociology at the University of Guelph.

“There is still a sense of right among many men in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America and the world they feel the right to female bodies,” said Dr. García-Sela Moral. “It has been proven to be very resilient and resistant to change.”

A study In 2023 a group of academics in Mexico discovered that femicide has risen in the country for almost ten years and surpasses other violent crimes, with around 10 or 11 women who are murdered every day.

According to the United Nations, more than 50,000 women Were murdered from 2001 to 2024, with less than 5 percent of the things that resulted in convictions.

State actors often do not investigate, or when they do that, they play down the violence by concentrating on gender-stereotypes, such as what a female victim wore or the choices she made possible that led to her death, said Mrs. García-Vel Moral. “Almost the victim blaming,” she added.

After Mrs. Márquez was shot, users flooded her TIKOK account with messages that expressed shock and condolences. Some wondered if the images were real. Tiktok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It is unclear whether the person who attacked Mrs. Márquez knew that she broadcast live, but, Mrs. García-Vel Moral said: “Any form of public feminicide wants to send a statement, whether it has been transferred live or not: that men can kill women with impunity.”

“Feminicidal violence in Mexico is so deep, and so wide, you are not necessarily protected because you are a richer socio -economic status, or be a politician or even live,” she added. “It doesn’t matter.”

McKinnon De Kuyper contributed reporting.