In Ecuador, a social media influencer who overcame drug addiction and changed her life was murdered.
On Saturday, August 4, Nicol Montenegro, 23, was discovered shot to death close to a warehouse in Yaguachi, a town in the Guayas province on the Pacific coast.
According to the Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo, the young woman was found face down and had been shot several times in the head.
Workers at the warehouse reported to police that they were inside sleeping when they heard several bullets fired around 3:30 in the morning.
Around 1,600 feet from the structure, the workers discovered Montenegro’s lifeless body close to a rice mill on Saturday afternoon.
Authorities claim that the perpetrators placed a box of matches and a container of gasoline close to the body.
Workers are thought to have intervened after the suspects turned on the lights to stop them from setting Montenegro’s body on fire.
As of Thursday afternoon, no one has been taken into custody.
After overcoming her drug addiction several years ago, Montenegro rose to fame on social media. Later, she used her own experiences to prevent other young people from making the same mistakes.
She had a sizable fan base on YouTube and TikTok, where she had more than 80,000 followers, and she posted videos of her interactions and motivational speeches with addicts in recovery.
Montenegro was a mother to a four-year-old girl.
Her family identified her body at a local morgue and transported it to the province of Los Rïos, south of the country’s capital, Quito, and held a funeral service Sunday in her hometown of Babahoyo.