Victor Valverde was wounded when armed men opened fire inside the Tai Pak restaurant in Culiacán, leaving one man dead and several other people injured before the attackers fled. The shooting, which also unfolded near the offices of the Fiscalía General del Estado, happened as diners were inside the Chinese restaurant in Desarrollo Urbano Tres Ríos.
Valverde is a regional Mexican singer and composer from El Dorado who was raised in Culiacán, and his name was quickly drawn into the case because investigators are still trying to determine whether the attack was aimed directly at him. He became widely known after the release of El Mayor de las Ranas with JR Torres in September 2024, a song tied to narco-themed narratives about Los Ranas and Los Chapitos.
The casualty count was still unsettled in the immediate reporting. The headline referred to six injured people, while the body of the report said seven were hurt, a discrepancy that reflects the early stage of the case rather than a confirmed difference in what happened. Authorities had not disclosed the severity of the injuries.
Some of the wounded were taken for medical attention in Policía Municipal patrol cars, while others were transferred by ambulance from Cruz Roja. The Secretaría de Seguridad Pública de Sinaloa said the area had been secured and that officers were deployed to locate the responsible people. That response pointed to a fast-moving search, but it did not settle the central question of motive or target.
The shooting also lands in a place that has already been marked by violence. It happened on Blvd. Enrique Sánchez Alonso near the site where César Gastélum was killed in August of the same year, deepening the sense that this stretch of Culiacán is under repeated strain. Valverde’s songs, including Mamoncita, Subí a la Blindada, YMVP, La Tiendita and Estoy Carita, have long circulated in a style that often brushes against violent imagery, but on this day the issue was not his catalog. It was whether he was the intended target and who else paid the price. For now, the answer remains in the hands of investigators still searching for the gunmen.
