An American YouTuber is feared dead after he was kidnapped in the Philippines.
Elliot Eastman, 26, of Vermont, was taken captive while living in a poor coastal town with his Filipino wife.
The police suspect he died in a struggle with his captors, although his body has not been recovered and he is believed to have been dumped in the ocean.
The man was living in Sibuco, a poor town in the southern Zamboanga del Norte province. The southern Philippines - a Muslim enclave in the mostly Catholic nation - is notoriously dangerous, and there have been instances of jihadists capturing or killing tourists.
But police say Eastman was captured by petty criminals who dragged him away on a speedboat on the night of October 17. Eastman was at home with his wife, a local Muslim woman, when four armed men barged in claiming to be police.
The former mayor of the town said Eastman's captors may have believed he was a rich foreigner or resented the Westerner's marriage to a local Muslim woman. One thing is clear: his apparent death was brutal.
A relative of one of the suspects told police that Eastman's body was thrown in the sea after a violent struggle with his captors, who shot him twice in the leg and abdomen, causing his death. Eastman's blood was found on the floor of his home with an empty M16 shell cartridge.
One of the suspects later confessed that Eastman was indeed shot dead and thrown overboard.
Regional police spokesperson Lt. Col. Ramoncelio Sawan said all indications point to Eastman's death, but his body has not been found, leaving some hope that he is still living.
While searching for Eastman last month, the police killed three suspects in a firefight in the restive southern region.
Eastman documented his life in Sibuco on his YouTube channel, and he appeared to eerily foreshadow his own demise in a recent Facebook livestream.
"As long as I'm here, my life is still at risk, you know,' Eastman said in a September 22 video.
"That's the reality, especially the area that I'm in....It's not even just the Philippines. This area that I'm in is like the most dangerous area in the country, so it's literally like the red zone."
The police have notified Eastman's family of his fate through the U.S. Embassy in Manila.
