Venezuelan TikTok Influencer Gunned Down During Livestream After Exposing Corruption

24 June 2025

A photo of Jesús Sarmiento from Fiscal General de Venezuela. Credit : Fiscal General de Venezuela/Instagram

Venezuelan TikTok personality Jesús Sarmiento, aged 25, found himself at the heart of a digital uprising before his life was violently cut short during a livestream session on June 22. Over the preceding months, Sarmiento had used his social media platform with nearly 80,000 followers as a weapon against corruption and crime, publicly naming officials he believed were colluding with organized gangs. His bold move earned him both admiration and peril in a country where such accusations can be fatal. The danger he courted became chillingly real when two armed intruders burst into his Maracay home mid-broadcast, ending his life in brutal fashion captured live on camera.

In a post on Instagram, Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab called for a swift and transparent investigation. He named the prosecutor’s office as the lead agency tasked with identifying and punishing all those responsible. The post included a frame from the livestream showing Sarmiento as he recorded the final, terrifying moments of his life, ending with a powerful plea for justice #Justice shared alongside the image.

Eyewitness accounts and videos from the scene offer a haunting portrait of Sarmiento’s final moments. His voice trembled as he uttered “they shot me, they shot me,” with blood pooling visibly around him. A woman’s panicked cries echo from behind the camera. Just seconds later, two figures emerge before the feed cuts out. The livestream was preserved and spread widely across TikTok, Instagram, and WhatsApp, igniting grief, outrage, and fear nationwide.

Sarmiento had been vocal about receiving threats from members of so-called GEDOs organized criminal gangs as well as from certain police figures. His outspoken denunciations highlighted the depth of impunity gripping parts of Venezuela, where corruption and violence sometimes operate in tandem. Sarmiento’s willingness to name names made him a symbol of resistance in Maracay and beyond.

The Attorney General’s announcement of an investigation was met with cautious optimism. While it suggested a federal commitment to accountability, many Venezuelans remain skeptical given the country’s tradition of political cover-ups and weak prosecution rates. The question now is whether justice for Sarmiento will emerge, or if his murder will join the long list of unsolved crimes that plague the nation.

Sarmiento’s livestream murder is both shocking and emblematic of a troubling global trend: the public and brutal extortion of dissenters via live media. Similar tragedies have unfolded in Mexico and Colombia, where influencers whose content questioned authority were targeted and killed, sometimes during live broadcasts. In Mexico, Valeria Marquez a beauty influencer was fatally shot during a live TikTok feed in her home salon. Days later, Colombian influencer María José Estupiñán was murdered in front of her mother after winning a court case against an abusive ex‑partner.

These cases reveal a dark intersection of digital influence, femicide, political repression, and the reckless use of social platforms for crimes of intimidation. They expose the deep vulnerability of content creators in societies stripped of protective structures, where speaking out can have lethal consequences .

Sarmiento’s followers have mobilized online, demanding justice and protection for whistleblowers. His story has been retweeted, shared across WhatsApp groups, and reinterpreted by human rights organizations. Some activists are framing his death as a rallying cry that may inspire greater calls for reform in Venezuela’s beleaguered public institutions.

With so many lives now amplified on live feeds, governments around the world are being forced to confront the limits of their control, the role of social media in shaping narrative, and the thin line between visibility and vulnerability. Sarmiento’s final moments captured in the raw immediacy of livestream video represent a powerful flashpoint in this admission of risk.

As the Venezuelan prosecutor’s office gets to work, international human rights observers are watching closely. Their focus is not only on solving this murder but on addressing the broader ecosystem that gave rise to it: one in which mid-tier public figures can amplify corruption claims and become deadlier targets for doing so.

In the end, Sarmiento’s legacy is twofold. He was a young man determined to use his voice against entrenched wrongdoing, and he became a martyr for digital free speech in a nation where silence is often the safer path. For his followers, the livestream that ended in tragedy became the final act of courage. Now the challenge lies in ensuring it becomes a catalyst for accountability.