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The 26-year-old YouTuber began sharing his life as the "first and only foreigner to have ever lived here in Sibuco," a the remote area in the Philippines on YouTube, after meeting "the love" of his life in the mountains.
Philippine National Police says YouTuber Elliot Eastman was shot during a kidnapping and feared dead.
Officials on Thursday said Eastman, 26, was likely killed after being shot twice while resisting abduction by gunmen in the country's southern region. Per CBC News, he was allegedly shot in the leg and stomach with an M16 rifle while trying to fight off four kidnappers who posed as police officers.
Eastman has not been found, despite a massive search, after the men dragged his body into a boat and left the scene.
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Regional police spokesperson Lt. Col. Ramoncelio Sawan said investigators received information from a relative of one of the suspects that Eastman died due to gunshot wounds in the thigh and abdomen, before his body was thrown into the sea.
"We are constrained to believe that he has died. All of the information that we have points to that," Sawan said, per CBS News. However, without the victim's body, officials said they're keeping a "little bit of hope that it may not be the case," as police continue their investigation.
Officials informed the US Embassy and Eastman's Filipino wife about his assumed death.
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View StoryOn his YouTube page, Eastman said he arrived in the Philippines about a year and a half ago and met "the love of my life deep in the mountains of the red zone of the Philippines."
He then began sharing his life in the Philippines on YouTube.
"I will be showing you my day to day life as the first and only foreigner to have ever lived here in sibuco for a long period of time," he said.
Eastman traveled out of the Philippines and returned to Sibuco to attend his wife's graduation when he was kidnapped. He had been posting Facebook videos of his life in the remote coastal town before his abduction; his last video was shared two days before the kidnapping.
Per Daily Mail, in a September 22 video, he spoke about his life being "still at risk" while living in the area for about five months. "This area that I'm in is like the most dangerous area in the country, so it's literally like the red zone," he said at the time.
