Online beauty influencer Maja Janeska, who has more than 1.2 million Instagram followers, was discovered dead in what local media and her families are calling “strange circumstances.” Many people were shocked to learn that a 39-year-old beauty influencer, had been shot in the head and was discovered dead in her bedroom.
Police are baffled by the unusual circumstance. They are trying to determine how the stunning woman passed away and whether foul play was involved surrounding the influencer’s death.
Police detectives claim that Janeska was discovered with a gunshot wound to the head on December 2, 2022, at her affluent Bassonia Estate home in Johannesburg, South Africa.
“Upon arrival at the address given, police found a woman in the bedroom with a gunshot wound on the head,” said police spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Mavela Masondo in a statement.
“There was a firearm next to her. The woman was certified dead by the paramedics.”
The celebrity makeup artist and online content producer known to her followers as “Maya Mia” was reportedly dating and living with Kyle Phillips, the co-director of the Johannesburg-based tobacco company Carnilinx. When a gunshot was heard coming from their bedroom, Phillips claimed to have heard it while brushing his teeth in the bathroom. In a report, Phillips is “devastated and in shock” over the incident.
Saying, “The police cannot comment on it now as that might jeopardize the investigation,” Masondo, a spokesman for the police, declined to clarify who was the owner of the gun that was reportedly used to murder the beauty influencer. He did make it clear, though, that disclosing too much about the gun’s owner may be problematic.
A “heartbroken” family member claimed that Janeska periodically “feared for her life” and worried about being murdered.
The relative, who begged to remain anonymous for their own safety, said,
“She sometimes feared for her life. Her boyfriend had men working for him, and she feared them also,”
“We are heartbroken, and we seriously don’t know what to do. We are in Europe, and our hands are tied because we can’t come to South Africa because of visa issues. Maja is lying there in some mortuary, and we don’t have any clue as to what is actually happening.”
According to a Phillips associate, the influential person’s death was most likely caused by suicide.
The leader of the South African Economic Freedom Fighters party and “close friend” of Janeska’s boyfriend, a tobacco mogul, Julius Malema, spoke about Janeska’s passing at a press conference.
“I haven’t spoken to Kyle but I knew her very well,” Malema told local news outlets. “We were friends. She was a very lovely lady, forward looking and she had very good plans for the continent and the country and held our leadership in high regard.”
Sources: AWM, Gadgetany, NYpost
