Mexico's Miss World director murdered hours after crowning Miss Sinaloa

Mexican beauty pageants have long been entwined with the country’s drug trade, especially in Sinaloa, home of the infamous Sinaloa cartel

Hugo Castellanos (left, with the newly crowned Miss Sinaloa) was a former model and the owner of a modelling agency (Miss Mexico/Facebook)

The director of Miss World in Mexico was kidnapped and murdered just hours after crowning the winner of a regional beauty contest in Sinaloa, the northeastern state synonymous with drug trade-related bloodshed.

Hugo Rubén Castellanos Jiménez, 39, named Melissa Carolina Lizárraga Miss Sinaloa on Saturday afternoon at a contest in the state capital, Culiacan. He was found dead in the back of a stolen Jeep Cherokee, riddled with bullet holes, in the early hours of the following morning.

A former model and current owner of a modelling agency, Jiménez was appointed director of Mexico’s Miss World organisation in May. He reportedly attended a party with participants after the contest, leaving at around 3.40am to drive to a restaurant with some friends.

The group were pulled over by gunman at a makeshift roadblock, where Jiménez was abducted while his friends were set free. The motive for his death remains unknown, but police said they had discounted robbery as a possibility after a large amount of cash was found at the scene.

“Yesterday, he crowned me. Today he’s not here,” Ms Lizárraga wrote on Facebook after news of the slaying emerged.

Mexican beauty pageants have long been entwined with the country’s drug trade, especially in Sinaloa, home of the infamous Sinaloa cartel and its leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who married his wife, small-town pageant winner Emma Coronel, on her 18th birthday in 2007.

The following year, Miss Sinaloa was stripped of her title after being arrested with several leaders of the Juarez cartel. She was jailed for 40 days before being released for lack of evidence.

In 2012, 20-year-old María Susana Flores Gámez, the winner of another pageant, Woman of Sinaloa, was killed in a gun battle between drug traffickers and the military. She was said to have been the girlfriend of a senior figure in the Sinaloa cartel.

The murder rate in the state has reportedly increased since January, when Guzmán was recaptured following his dramatic 2015 escape from a high-security Mexican prison. It is thought that rival gangs have been trying to capitalise on his capture by fighting for control of the region’s lucrative drugs trade.