Shocking CCTV footage has captured the moment former beauty queen Landy Párraga Goyburo was gunned down inside a busy restaurant in Ecuador. The 23-year-old, who competed in the Miss Ecuador pageant in 2022, was having breakfast with her partner at a shopping centre in Quevedo on Sunday morning when two masked men entered the venue.
The video shows one of the attackers charging towards Párraga, who drops to the floor as her partner also takes cover. The gunman opens fire, striking her multiple times before fleeing the scene. Disturbing images later showed her lying in a pool of blood. It remains unclear if her partner survived the attack.
Police have launched a murder investigation to track down the assailants. Párraga, who represented Los Ríos Province in the Miss Ecuador contest, had amassed over a million followers on social media. Her name was mentioned in a December 2023 conversation made public by the Attorney General’s Office as part of a major organised crime case.
In that conversation, Helive Angulo, one of 52 people being prosecuted, told drug trafficker Leandro Norero that police had questioned him about the beauty queen. Angulo wrote: “If my wife comes across anything about her, I’m screwed. My friend, her name cannot come out anywhere. Otherwise, my world will come crashing down.” Norero was later killed in prison in 2022, six months after being jailed.
The Attorney General’s Office is examining bank transfers made to Párraga’s account. She was never prosecuted and never spoke publicly about the case.
