Pregnant Love Island star shot dead by ex-boyfriend in front of toddler daughter after taking out protection order against him

22-year-old Teodora Marcu was fatally shot four times while walking down the street with her two-year-old daughter, Emma, and her cousin.

The reality star, who was 26 weeks pregnant and was due to have a baby boy, was killed by former partner Robert Lupu, as reported by Antena 3 CNN. The shooting incident happened on the outskirts of Bucharest, Romania, at around 7pm local time on Saturday night.

Lupu, aged 49, who had been in an on/off relationship with Teodora in the years prior to the incident, was alleged to have shot his ex with a pistol before shooting himself with another handgun hours later, judicial sources told local publication Libertatea.

Witnesses told local media that Lupu had followed his former partner and approached her calmly before pulling out a weapon and shooting her from close range. Teodora was taken to hospital but she died from her injuries a short time later.

The reality TV star rose to fame when she was a contestant on a Romanian version of Love Island in 2022. She had spoken out about her strained on-off relationship with Lupu and took out a protection order against him in 2021.

Teodora was with a new partner whom she had married, Alex Marcu. The pair had welcomed their daughter Emma in August 2022, and had announced they were expecting their second child - a son - in April. Their happy news came despite doctors telling them she would not be able to conceive, as reported by local publication A1. Alex was in Chisinau in Moldova at the time of the shooting.

CCTV footage from the area where the fatal shooting took place showed a man dressed in black approaching Teodora, Emma and her cousin, who has not been named. It did not pick up the sound of gunshots.

The footage shows Teodora’s cousin pulls the child away from scene before going back over to the injured star. Bystanders also tried to provide first aid.

Teodora had reportedly been at a children's party with her cousin and her child before the attack. They left the party and went to buy ice-cream together when she was then alledgedly shot four times in the chest and abdomen by Lupu.

Lupu then calmly left the scene. Police found the suspect at a residential complex nearby soon after. He shot himself dead as officers surrounded him, local media reports.

Lupu, who was 26 years his ex-girlfriend’s senior, first met Teodora when she was 14 and he was 40, Libertatea reports.

Teodora previously claimed that they broke up after she learned that his relationship with his ex-wife had not completely ended, according to local publication Adevarul. They later reconciled, however, and then continued dating for two years before splitting again.

When she appeared on season six of the Romanian Love Island, however, she revealed that she had sought a protection order as “he was always coming after us and it annoyed me”.

“She found out she was pregnant when she was on the show. And when Robert, her ex, found out, he said he was coming and cutting her belly,” an anonymous source told Actualitate.net. “They lived in terror for a long time. He knew everything: where they lived, where Teodora went, what she did. He followed her step by step.”

Lupu had written a book, called The Life of a Ragman and His Analyses, about his relationship with Teodora, Libertatea reports. In the book, which was not unpublished, he claimed she had cheated on him with Alex Marcu.

In the book he also reportedly described how he wanted to win her back, however, and to do so he had decided to “do something crazy” and “become a magician with proper documents” in a bid to win her back.

A police statement said that officers were called to the scene of the shooting at around 7:09pm on May 31. They were told that “on a street in a residential neighborhood a 23-year-old woman had been physically assaulted, by shooting, with a weapon, by a man.”

Police and paramedics immediately went to the scene. The police statement went on: “Following the checks carried out, the man in question, aged 49, was identified and will be tracked down. Two lethal firearms were found on the man, one of which he used to commit suicide. The two weapons were seized by specialists from the Weapons Service of the Ilfov County Police Inspectorate and we are still trying to determine their origin.”

The investigation into Teodora’s alleged murder is on-going.