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On 12 August, the “partially charred” body of a woman was found in vineyards in Saint-Gilles, a small village around twenty kilometres from Nîmes, in the south of France.
A week later, the Nîmes public prosecutor’s office announced that DNA testing had confirmed the woman’s identity as 29-year-old Sonia Bellina – an influencer with more than 250,000 followers on TikTok.
On her account, Bellina posted videos of herself dancing, singing karaoke, lip-syncing, and talking about fashion and relationships. She also interacted with her followers through livestreams.
Although she was based in Paris, she regularly travelled back to the southern French department of Gard, where she was from, to spend time with her family.
In a statement, the Nîmes public prosecutor, Cécile Gensac, said that two men had been arrested on Wednesday and “placed in police custody because of evidence suggesting their direct or indirect involvement in the events.”
One of the men, who is already known to authorities due to a number of violent offences, is suspected of having been the last person to have contact with the influencer on the night she disappeared.
A woman who said she was Bellina’s sister described the night of her disappearance: “She told us at 1 am: ‘I’ll be back, I’m going to see someone, I’ll be back quickly’.”
“She didn’t take her bag, she didn’t take anything, she just walked out. Her phone went off at 2am. We tried to call her. Nothing. Her phone had been switched off,” she added.
On Monday, French newspaper Midi Libre interviewed a woman identified as Bellina’s older sister, who said in a video: “She ran into the wrong guy at the wrong time”.
In another video circulating on social media, one of the young woman’s sisters said she feared Sonia had fallen victim to a man she was seeing, adding that the family did not know who he was.
Speaking to Agence France-Presse (AFP), the family’s lawyer, Mourad Battikh, condemned what he called the “unspeakable cruelty” of online reactions to videos in which the young woman shows off her appearance.
“We will take legal action against anyone who commits an offence”, he warned.
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