Kidnappers appear to live tweet Citizen journalist gruesome death

WARNING: Distressing Content

A CITIZEN joualist who spoke out against violent crime in her city has been killed with a picture of her body tweeted as a waing to others, according to reports.

The gruesome incident involves a Mexican woman known as Felina who tweeted under @Miut3 handle using the hashtag #reynosafollow to wa others about crime in her city, the Daily Beast reports.

She tweeted events from Reynosa, a city of 600,000 which is renowned for extreme corruption and crime including extortion, kidnapping and arson — where reporters risk death by speaking out against the all-powerful criminal element that controls everything from local govement to street vendors.

As a result, citizen joualists use Facebook and Twitter to wa others about dangers in the region, but work hard to keep their identity a secret, The Texas Observer reports.

Felina was an administrator for an account called Valour por Tamaulipas, which has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter and 510,000 on Facebook, where she would publish real-time reports of dangerous areas and ask victims of crime to file police reports, according to The Daily Beast.

However she had also become a target.

Last week, a chilling string of tweets from Felina"s account made it seem as if she had been kidnapped and was being threatened.

"Friends and family, my real name is Maria Del Rosario Fuentes Rubio, I"m a doctor and today, my life has come to an end,” said the first tweet from her account which has since been taken down.

"I can only tell you to not make the same mistake I did, it doesn"t benefit you, quite the opposite as I realize today.”

A third tweet a few minutes later included three other Twitter users and waed that "death is closer to us than you think”.

While a final tweet said: "close your accounts, don"t risk your families the way I did” followed by two pictures of a woman; one alive and one of her body beaten and bloodied.

The founder of Valor por Tamaulipas confirmed Felina is pictured in the photos.

Theories differ as to the motive for the murder with some suggesting it could be a revenge attack for the treatment of a drug dealer"s son.

However the online community is more paranoid than ever about their safety.

Police are investigating.