Diana O'Brien, 22, began modelling locally more than a year ago and enjoyed three months of modelling in Milan, friends said. (Barbara Coultish Model Management)

A young B.C. model found stabbed in Shanghai was stalked by a man she met during a modelling job there, one of her friends told CBC News Wednesday.

Diana O'Brien, 22, of Saltspring Island, had been in China since mid-June after landing a contract with Jh Model Agency in Shanghai.

O'Brien's family and friends learned on Monday that her body had been found, but few details about her death have been released by authorities in Canada or China.

Alex Rodriquez, the boyfriend of O'Brien's roommate Charlotte Wood, said that a Chinese man from one of O'Brien's modelling jobs had been stalking her.

Rodriguez said his girlfriend, also from B.C., told him that O'Brien met the man during a modelling job about a week before she was found dead.

The Chinese man wouldn't leave O'Brien alone and called her numerous times, though she avoided his calls, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said his girlfriend believes that the man was responsible for O'Brien's death.

He also said that Chinese police have video footage of a man running from the apartment building.

Rodriguez said Shanghai police questioned Wood for two days straight in a basement room with no cellphone access.

She is scared and is now staying with other overseas models, he said. Although Rodriguez made the comments in an interview with CBC News, he asked not to be recorded.

Rodgriquez told CBC News that Wood discovered O'Brien's body in the stairwell of their apartment building on Monday.

According to a report in the Globe and Mail on Wednesday, a Chinese cleaning woman told the newspaper she had found O'Brien's body covered with blood around 5:30 a.m. Monday in the apartment's stairwell, and that it looked like she had been stabbed several times. She said there were blood stains from the woman's apartment door all the way to the stairwell.

China turns down Canadian help

The Canadian Foreign Affairs Department said Wednesday that it offered to help the Shanghai police in their investigation into O'Brien's death, but Chinese authorities have turned down the offer.

O'Brien had apparently been stabbed and was fully clothed when found. Her apartment was apparently ransacked, and laptops and cameras were reportedly missing.

O'Brien's friends have said she didn't like working in Shanghai, and had bought an airline ticket and planned to return to B.C. in two weeks, after finishing her final assignment.

Other friends have told the media O'Brien was unhappy with the work promoting a whisky brand by dancing on podiums in bars, and that was why she wanted to come home.

O'Brien's boyfriend, Joel Berry, said Tuesday his girlfriend might have been unhappy and wanted to come home before the end of her three-month contract, but it was not because of concerns about the kind of work she was asked to do in local bars.

O'Brien, who had lived with her boyfriend and other friends in Saltspring Island, began modelling locally more than a year ago and did a three-month stint in Milan before her China trip, friends said.