Teenage TikTok star Sana Yousaf has died at the age of 17 after being fatally shot inside her home in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Yousaf, who had over 1 million followers on the popular platform, was killed in the Pakistani capital on Monday, June 2.
Police said she was shot dead by a man who had repeatedly tried to contact her through social media, reported CBS News on Tuesday, June 3.
“It was a case of repeated rejections. The boy was trying to reach out to her time and again,” police chief Syed Ali Nasir Rizvi said during a Tuesday news conference, per CBS News. “It was a gruesome and cold-blooded murder.”
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A 22-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder, local police said.
Yousaf regularly posted lip-sync videos, beauty tutorials and reviews on TikTok, amassing 1.1 million followers and 38.4 million likes.
The teen’s final TikTok post appeared to celebrate her 17th birthday. Yousaf can be seen cutting into a birthday cake in a video posted earlier this week.
Yousaf’s death follows a spate of disturbing murders of social media influencers.
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In May, Mexican TikTok star Valeria Márquez was shot dead during a livestream. Prosecutors said a hitman may have targeted her. She was 21.
At the time, Denis Rodríguez, a spokesperson for the Jalisco State Prosecutor’s Office, told AP News that the 23-year-old influencer’s death was still under investigation.
Before Márquez was murdered, Rodríguez claimed that a man posing as a delivery driver and another man on a motorcycle arrived at a beauty salon located in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara. The men were looking to deliver a gift to Márquez in person — which prompted her to worry on the livestream.
“Maybe they were going to kill me,” Márquez said in the video, per the outlet. “Were they going to come and take me away, or what? I’m worried.”
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When the men returned, they searched for Márquez again. Rodríguez told the outlet that the men asking for Márquez led prosecutors to believe that they were hired assassins.
“The aggressor arrived asking if the victim was there. So it appears he didn’t know her,” Rodríguez said. “With that, you can deduce — without jumping to conclusions — that this was a person who was paid. It was obviously someone who came with a purpose.”
AP reported that Márquez was handed a stuffed animal and a bag of Starbucks coffee while she was on the livestream and collapsed on camera after being shot. (Márquez’s TikTok appeared to be taken down following her death, but a video of the incident circulated online and was confirmed by the prosecutor’s office.)
Also in May, a Colombian influencer, Maria Jose Estupinan, was reportedly shot dead inside her home in the city of Cucuta. She was 22.
