China: Police probe Canadian model death

An official in the news department of Shanghai's Public Security Bureau said that police got an emergency call early Monday about the death of Diana O'Brien. Police said she was 23, though media reports in Canada have said she was 22.

The official, who gave only her family name, Fang, gave no further details on O'Brien's death. The murder had not been mentioned in Chinese-language media in Shanghai as of Wednesday morning. A one-paragraph statement about it was posted on the Public Security Bureau's Web site.

Police said O'Brien entered China on June 24. She was working for a Shanghai-based modeling company, JH Model Management.

The Web site for JH, which says it is "one of the leading modeling agencies in the East of China for over 100 models," has not been accessible since Tuesday evening.

A young man who answered the door Tuesday night at the address the agency gave on its Web site said he didn't know of any modeling agency there. The apartment is in a high-rise building complex where several apartments have been converted into offices.

O'Brien's friends in Canada told a local newspaper they were concerned because she had told them she didn't like the work she was doing in Shanghai--promoting whiskey, for example--and wanted to cut short her three-month contract and come home.

But her boyfriend added that O'Brien had told him she always felt safe and never went anywhere alone, according to the Victoria Times Colonist.

"We are just waiting for answers at this time. It's very difficult. She wasn't into drugs or alcohol or anything like that, so you can't think it was anything except foul play," the boyfriend, Joel Berry, was quoted as saying.

A statement from Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada said consular officials in Shanghai were told of O'Brien's death on Monday and that Canadian officials are in regular contact with the Chinese authorities conducting the investigation.