Shocking Murder of Rising Tech Star Pava LaPere Stuns Baltimore

The bru­tal killing of fast-ris­ing tech CEO Pava LaPere has left Bal­ti­more reel­ing. LaPere, founder of map­ping start­up EcoMap, was found dead Mon­day in her lux­u­ry Mount Ver­non apart­ment with blunt force trau­ma. She was only 26 years old.

Police respond­ed after LaPere was report­ed miss­ing. They dis­cov­ered her body show­ing signs of a vicious attack. The med­ical exam­in­er took pos­ses­sion of her remains as the homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tion kicks off.

Mys­tery shrouds the high-pro­file mur­der. It’s unclear if LaPere had guests over before her slay­ing. The Forbes 30 Under 30 hon­oree appar­ent­ly lived alone based on her social media. “That’s hor­ri­fy­ing,” said stunned neigh­bor Chris McNees. “For this to hap­pen any­where is bad, but it’s hard to imag­ine here.”

LaPere’s promis­ing life was cut short in a vicious instant. The Johns Hop­kins grad start­ed EcoMap from her dorm room. Her com­pa­ny recent­ly raised $7 mil­lion to make ecosys­tem data acces­si­ble using pow­er­ful technology.

The mis­sion-dri­ven CEO pri­or­i­tized diver­si­ty, boast­ing a 50–50 gen­der and minor­i­ty employ­ee split. Now her shocked team mourns the sense­less loss of their “deeply com­pas­sion­ate leader.”

With LaPere’s sav­age killing unsolved, unease grips Bal­ti­more’s tech com­mu­ni­ty. The police inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues into the trag­ic mur­der of this ris­ing young star. EcoMap called her pass­ing “deeply dis­tress­ing” — but it’s a under­state­ment for this enor­mous loss.