Chinese police confirmed on Wednesday that a 23-year-old model from Canada had been murdered in Shanghai early on Monday.

Police received an emergency call at about 5:30 a.m. on Monday about the death of Diana O'Brien. Her body was found at a residential building where she lived at the Zhaohua Road, Changning District, a Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau spokesman said.

O'Brien, who came from Saltspring Island, British Columbia, according to international media reports, entered China on June 24.

She arrived in the country's financial hub to work for a Shanghai-based modeling company, identified in media reports as JH Model Agency.

An investigation into the case was underway.

The spokesman would not provide further details.

An on-line description of JH said it was "one of the leading modeling agencies in the East of China for over 100 models" and "all of them come from different countries."

But its official website www.jh-model.com couldn't be accessed on Wednesday. In addition, the company's phone number was always busy, suggesting it as an invalid number.

(Xinhua News Agency July 10, 2008)