SHANGHAI, China — In the two short weeks the 22-year-old Canadian model was in China, she found only disappointment, and then a violent death during a robbery.
The seemingly random murder so soon before the Olympic Games has shocked a city that prides itself as China’s most modern. It also has raised questions about a freewheeling fashion scene that lures young foreigners — who find some job requests require no posing for the camera.
Days after Diana O’Brien’s body was discovered, police in Shanghai said Friday they had arrested 18-year-old Chen Jun. Police said Chen confessed to following her into her high-rise apartment, robbing her and killing her when she tried to fight him off.
The slaying embarrassed police, who waited two days after O’Brien’s body was found to release a statement — a brief two sentences — about her death.
The murder was a blunt ending to O’Brien’s unhappy stay in China, where her modeling dreams met the reality of Shanghai’s often unregulated industry. The same city that hosted Salvatore Ferragamo’s 80-year retrospective this spring also has foreign models, some just teenagers, dancing in bars and promoting alcohol.
O’Brien, who came from a small community outside Vancouver and was described by friends as outgoing, had been homesick and uncomfortable with her work in Shanghai.
“There were few modeling jobs. ‘Why don’t you be a hostess?’ as they put it,” said Barry Kazakoff, a friend in her hometown of 10,000, Saltspring Island. He said O’Brien planned to cut short her three-month contract and return home early but was waiting to do one last modeling job.
The little-known Shanghai-based modeling agency that brought O’Brien to China and arranged her housing and security, JH Model Management, has disappeared. Its website was taken down Tuesday, and a young man at its listed address, an apartment, said he didn’t know of the agency or O’Brien’s case.
Canada’s foreign affairs department did not immediately respond to a telephone request for information. Her father, reached by phone in Canada, also declined to comment.
