'Maybe they were going to kill me,' Valeria Marquez said minutes before being shot

Some of the last words of Valeria Marquez, the Mexican influencer who was shot and killed Tuesday during a TikTok livestream in her beauty salon on the outskirts of Guadalajara, Mexico, were: “Maybe they were going to kill me. Were they going to come and take me away, or what? I’m worried.” On Thursday, CBS News quoted Denis Rodríguez, a spokesperson for the Jalisco State Prosecutor’s Office, which is investigating the murder. Rodríguez told the broadcaster that on Tuesday afternoon, hours before the shooting, a masked man posing as a delivery driver had arrived at the salon with another man on a motorcycle. The men said they had a “very expensive” gift for Marquez that they had to deliver in person. When she later heard that people were looking for her, she expressed her fear in her livestream. Shortly after her remark about being worried, a man off-screen called out, “Hey Vale?” Marquez answered “Yes?” before muting the livestream, per Reuters. A video from CNN shows Marquez with a stuffed animal and a bag of Starbucks coffee, shortly before being shot in the head and chest and collapsing on camera. (The edited video ends before the violence happens.)

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Valeria Marquez (@v___marquez)

Reuters reports that the 23-year-old influencer had nearly 200,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram. TikTok has since taken down her account. An Instagram account in that name is still active, linked to Marquez’s Blossom in Beauty salon where she was killed. Rodríguez told the New York Post that he suspects a hitman, or “sicario,” was the shooter. “The aggressor arrived asking if the victim 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.” He said authorities are also investigating whether the murder was connected to that of a former congressman just hours earlier in the same region of Guadalajara, carried out by gun-wielding men on motorcycles in a shopping mall. Reuters reports that the murder is also being investigated as a possible femicide — the killing of women or girls for reasons of gender — citing a statement from the prosecutor’s office released on Tuesday evening. A recent UN report notes that since the turn of the century, some 50,000 women have been murdered in Mexico, adding that only two per cent of cases end in a criminal sentence.

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