Add The New York Post on Google Murdered Mexican influencer Cesar Gastélum chillingly uttered, “Those guys scare me” — just moments before being shot dead by a motorbike-riding assassin on a live-stream, according to reports.
Gastélum, 24, was gunned down during a social media skit with two pals outside a KFC restaurant in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico, on Tuesday night.
The trio, dressed as food delivery workers, were standing by the restaurant’s drive-thru and Gastélum expressed fear after spotting a motorcycle nearby.
“The motorcycle, the motorcycle,” one of Gastélum’s pals said, according to the Mexican outlet El Heraldo de Mexico.
“Those guys scare me,” Gastélum ominously replied.
Minutes later, Gastélum was shot in the head at point-blank range.
The two people on the bike fled the scene and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has vowed the killers will be brought to justice.
“The actual perpetrators — and if applicable, the mastermind — must be arrested, and the reason behind this tragic homicide must be uncovered,” she said Wednesday.
The authorities are investigating whether his killing was linked to cartel violence.
Gastélum, who boasted more than 650,000 TikTok followers, described himself as a “belico,” a term that literally translates as “warlike” and is used as slang in cartel culture.
Sinaloa, located in northwest Mexico, has been plagued by cartel violence.
Culiacán has seen clashes involving factions of the Sinaloa Cartel.
The cartel is “one of the world’s most powerful drug cartels and is one of the largest producers and traffickers of fentanyl and other illicit drugs to the United States,” the Trump Administration said last February, declaring it a foreign terrorist organization.
The criminal organization “has used violence to murder, kidnap, and intimidate civilians, government officials, and journalists,” the White House said.
The Los Chapitos faction would leave a pizza or pizza box on a dead body, while members of the Los Mayos faction would leave behind a sombrero, according to reports.
Gastélum was filmed wearing a white sombrero before being shot, and wearing hats could signify an allegiance to one cartel faction.
Alejandro Fierro, who was live-streaming with Gastélum at the time, said his friend “never deserved this.”
“I don’t understand the situation and I don’t think I ever will,” he wrote on his Instagram Stories in Spanish, describing the tragedy as the “worst day” of his life.
“I don’t know what I’ll do with my life without you.”
“My friend and I were just two young guys with a dream who weren’t hurting anyone,” Fierro said in another post.
Gastélum was killed one year after influencer Valeria Marquez, 23, was gunned down in her Jalisco beauty salon.
Drug lord Ramón Ángel Álvarez Ayala, a senior figure in the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, allegedly ordered her assassination because she and his son had broken up, according to Mexican authorities.
