A Costa Rican social media personality and her partner were shot inside their bedroom in the morning hours of July 4 while they slept, according to local authorities cited by Costa Rican outlet La Nación.
Gabriela de los Ángeles Sanarrusia Chavarría, 28, and her boyfriend Jorge Isaac Agüero, 30, were killed when multiple armed men broke into their home in the Irving neighborhood of La Cruz, Guanacaste, and opened fire indiscriminately. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigators with Costa Rica's Judicial Investigation Department, known by its Spanish acronym OIJ, processed the crime scene that morning, removing the bodies and collecting ballistic evidence from the couple's room.
Authorities suspect the killings may have been a settling of scores, given the level of violence involved—though the Judicial Police said the case remains under active investigation and no official motive has been confirmed.
After carrying out the attack, the suspects fled the scene. A burned white vehicle was found approximately two kilometers from the home and is believed by the OIJ to have been used in connection with the crime, authorities confirmed to La Nación.
Chavarría had gained a following of more than 100,000 across her Instagram and TikTok accounts, where she regularly documented her travels, shared lifestyle content, and posted about her 9-year-old daughter. On TikTok, she had over 84,400 followers, with another 27,300 on Instagram. Her travel posts included trips to Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua, as well as a June visit to Medellín, Colombia, where she celebrated her birthday with her daughter and close friends.
What appears to have been her final social media post came on July 3—just one day before her death—when she reshared a 2020 video featuring her daughter, captioning it: "When did you grow up so much, my baby 🥹🙏🏻." Following news of her death, fans flooded the comments section with tributes to the late content creator.
“May you rest in peace,” one person wrote.
Violence Strikes Again
The killing marked the second violent death to touch Chavarría's inner circle in recent years. According to La Nación, her former partner—identified by the surname Cruz Campos—was among three men shot and killed on April 30, 2024, while playing billiards, also in the Irving neighborhood of La Cruz.According to the outlet, the Public Prosecutor's Office had opened a case in 2021 against Cruz for alleged migrant smuggling, while his brother had been under investigation since February 2020 for alleged drug trafficking and money laundering offenses in Nicaragua, per Nicaraguan outlet La Prensa.
De Souza Rocha, who had built a following of more than 32,000 on Instagram by coaching others on growing a social media presence, was pulled from the wreck by fire services and later pronounced dead at São João Batista Hospital.