Mexican drug lord arrested in fatal shooting of beauty influencer during livestream
A leader of a major Mexican drug cartel has been arrested over his alleged involvement in the death of beauty influencer Valeria Marquez, who was fatally shot while she was livestreaming on TikTok.
ABC News affiliate ABC7 reported that Ramón Ángel Álvarez Ayala was detained by special forces in downtown Atotonilco el Alto, Jalisco last week. Ayala is one of the senior figures in the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which has been dubbed by the US Treasury as "one of the most powerful cartels in the world."
Marquez was shot dead at 23 on May 13, 2025, while she was doing a TikTok livestream inside Blossom the Beauty Lounge, the salon where she worked in the city of Zapopan, Mexico. Seconds before she was shot, Marquez was seen sitting at a table holding a plushie.
A man's voice was heard off-camera confirming her identity. Right after she confirmed and muted the sound, she was shot, with the livestream showing her slumping onto the table and an unidentified person turning off her phone.
Per local newspaper Diario de Yucatan, Marquez's alleged murderers left the crime scene in two different vehicles.
Following Marquez's murder, investigators found a bouquet of red roses topped with a white ribbon with the word "perdón" (sorry) scrawled in black ink. Authorities detected fingerprints on the bouquet, which was wrapped in black paper, but the delivery man who dropped off the flowers at the salon said he didn't know who ordered the bouquet.
According to Omar Garcia Harfuch, Mexico's Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Ayala supposedly ordered Marquez's murder after his son, Francisco Álvarez, told his father Marquez had broken up with him.
Harfuch said Alvarez had threatened Marquez on several occasions.
"Everything indicates, and this will be proven, that the son asked his father, R-1, to carry out the femicide," Harfuch told media, referring to Ayala by the code police have given the drug lord.
Alvarez and the gunman have yet to be arrested.
Ayala is also wanted for the assassination of Uruapan Mayor Carlos Manzo, who was murdered during a Day of the Dead festival in November 2025. Although it was teen gunman Victor Manuel Ubaldo, 17, who shot and killed the mayor, Harfuch said it was Ayala who was the "mastermind behind the cowardly murder."
