Online beauty influencer Maja Janeska, who has more than 1.2 million Instagram followers, was discovered dead in what local media and her family are calling “strange circumstances.”
According to police detectives, Janeska, 39, was found in December at her opulent Bassonia Estate house in Johannesburg, South Africa, with a gunshot wound to the head. 2
“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.”
According to reports, Kyle Phillips, the co-director of the Johannesburg-based tobacco firm Carnilinx, was dating and living with the celebrity cosmetics artist and online content creator known to her followers as “Maya Mia.”
Phillips told cops that he was brushing his teeth in the bathroom when he heard a gunshot coming from their bedroom. Phillips is reportedly “devastated and in shock by this tragedy.”
When asked who owned the gun, Lieutenant-Colonel Masondo remained silent and said, “The police cannot comment on it at this time since that could endanger the investigation.”
According to a “heartbroken” family member, Janeska occasionally “feared for her life” and worried about being murdered, according to South African media site News 24.
This is all new to us, and our phones haven’t stopped ringing,” the relative, who begged to remain anonymous for their own safety, said. We are unable to travel to South Africa due to visa complications, therefore we are stuck in Europe. We have no idea what is actually happening as [Janeska] lies there in a mortuary.
The family member continued by saying that one of Phillips’ former associates had informed them of her passing and that the current theory is that she committed suicide.
“She sometimes feared for her life. Her boyfriend had men working for him, and she feared them also,” the anonymous relative told News 24 amid reports that Phillips “surrounded himself with bodyguards” and refused to be examined by state pathologists on the scene. “We are heartbroken, and we seriously don’t know what to do.”
In a news conference, Julius Malema, the head of the South African Economic Freedom Fighters party and a “close friend” of Janeska’s boyfriend, a tobacco tycoon, discussed Janeska’s passing.
“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.”
According to Jam Press, Janeksa revealed in a guest lecture she gave to university students nine days prior to her passing that she travelled to Tanzania when she was 19 years old to work in a hotel. She developed her Swahili language skills during that period and began her career as a cosmetics artist and stylist.
Janeska included a photo of herself and Bujar Osman, the foreign minister of North Macedonia, in her final Instagram post on November 22. “Establishing diplomatic relations between my country, the Republic of North Macedonia, and my second home, the Republic of South Africa,” she stated as the purpose of the meeting.
Read More: Who was Maja Janeska? Found dead with a gunshot wound