Gabriel Jesús Sarmiento Rodríguez, 25, had denounced several police officers for corruption and alleged members of criminal gangs.

He recorded his own murder live on TikTok. The 25-year-old influencer died in his home in the El Piñonal sector of Aragua State, in central Venezuela, when armed men broke into his residence, according to the TikToker himself.

In the recording, the screams of a woman pleading for help can be heard, while Sarmiento requested assistance from Sebin intelligence officers and repeated his address: “El Piñonal, JJ Montesinos Street,” he said over and over again.

Then a burst of gunfire rang out, and the armed men appeared directly on camera, shot him twice, and ended the broadcast.

The incident occurred on Sunday night. On his TikTok account @unleacks, which has 76,000 followers, a series of accusations were posted by Sarmiento against police officers allegedly involved in corruption and who had been extorting him, as well as members of the Tren de Aragua and Tren del Llano gangs.

These are, presumably, the background to the armed attack suffered by the man who, according to his videos, was a computer programmer.

In many of the recordings, Sarmiento tagged high-ranking government officials, such as Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Aragua Governor Johana Sánchez, as well as the official accounts of law enforcement agencies to raise the allegations he made.

He had also reported threats from La Morita prison, a Bolivarian Police detention center, where, according to his social media accounts, he was detained for 15 days in recent months.

The young man made his recordings from the streets of Maracay, when he went to court to follow up on the complaints.

The video of the armed attack was not posted on his account, but it was on several others who joined the live broadcast and shared it.

The case has caused shock, like other murders that have occurred live in Latin America recently, such as that of the Mexican influencer Valeria Márquez or the Colombian María José Estupiñán.

Attorney General Tarek William Saab has appointed the 69th National Prosecutor's Office of the Public Ministry to investigate the homicide.

Local media have reported that Sarmiento's relatives claimed that the young man was shot at least nine times and that his mother, the woman screaming for help in the video, was injured by a bullet to the abdomen.

In one of the recordings, Sarmiento also named the leader of the Aragua Train, Hector Rutherford Guerrero Flores, known as Niño Guerrero, who has been a fugitive from authorities since 2023, when a massive military operation intervened in the Tocorón prison from which he operated.

The Venezuelan government then assured that it had completely dismantled this gang, which has been at the center of the diplomatic conflict with the United States, which has criminalized Venezuelan migrants by accusing them—without evidence or trials—of belonging to the criminal organization.

In April, Minister Cabello asserted that the Aragua Train gang was “nothing more than an urban legend,” but that its leaders were in Colombia.