Influencer With 250,000 Followers Feared Dead as French Police Open Murder Probe

The murder mystery unfolds in the south of France after a farmworker unearthed the charred body of a woman between the rows of grape vines.

Local media outlets say the deceased could be a social media influencer with more than 250,000 TikTok followers.

The body was found on August 12th in Saint-Gilles, a town of some 14,700 people situated 20 km to the south of Nîmes. The worker called the police to report his horrific discovery, and the prosecutor arrived to supervise the crime site.

Europe 1 reports that Nîmes prosecutor Cécile Gensac initiated a criminal inquiry over suspicions of assassination, a type of premeditated murder. In her statement, she stressed that the preliminary findings show that the body was likely to belong to an unidentified woman. The Gard gendarmerie division and the Nîmes research brigade were ordered to investigate the case.

An autopsy is supposed to be performed the next day to ascertain the identity of the victim, the causes of her death, and the factors that led to discarding the body in the vineyard. Authorities will take various samples on-site and request DNA analysis.

The body found in the vineyard matches the description of the 29-year-old influencer from Nîmes, according to the report from Ouest France, which confirms the information of the local newspaper Midi Libre after it said earlier that the woman was an influencer. Official confirmation from prosecutors was not reported; the cause of her death is not disclosed either.

The influencer’s name, Sonia Bellina, appeared widely on TikTok, Facebook and X in the aftermath of the crime. Her family was informed about the suspicions, but forensic and DNA testing is required, Midi Libre noted.

A woman who claimed she was Bellina’s sister spoke about her last days in a TikTok livestream on Monday. She told her relatives she was planning to go out in the evening but did not come back home. They found the body on Wednesday morning, and she hopes the killer will be captured one day.

Her TikTok channel gained popularity through dance videos and funny skits.

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Neither the perpetrator nor their motivation has been revealed yet; the police have not discarded any version of what happened to the victim yet.