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Instagram Influencer Alexis Sharkey Was Strangled to Death in Homicide: Autopsy

Instagram Influencer Alexis Sharkey Was Strangled to Death in Homicide: Autopsy

Instagram Influencer's Mom & Friend Speak Out About Her Mysterious Death: 'Somebody Hurt Her'

Police continue to investigate the suspicious death of Alexis Sharkey

Social media influencer Alexis Sharkey's death was a homicide by strangulation, authorities announced Tuesday.

The announcement was made by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences following Sharkey's autopsy. The nude body of the 26-year-old influencer was found by a sanitation truck employee alongside a Houston road on November 28 -- two days after she first went missing.

The day before she disappeared, Alexis spent Thanksgiving morning with her husband at their Houston-area apartment before stopping by a friend's house for dinner.

The last time friends heard from Alexis --who sold products for Monat, a multi-level marketing company that sells skin-care, hair and hygiene products -- was Friday evening.

"We are so very desperate," Alexis' mother wrote on Facebook on November 28. "Please help us find her and bring her home."

alexis sharkey/instagram Alexis Sharkey

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Her body was found the next day, just three miles from her apartment.

"There are no arrests or charges in the case at this time," Houston Police Department spokesman John Cannon tells PEOPLE. "The investigation is ongoing. "

RELATED: Foul Play Not Ruled Out in Influencer's Death, as Friend Says She Was 'Scared for Her Life'

alexis sharkey/instagram Alexis Sharkey

Authorities initially had said her body showed no outward signs of trauma, but people close to Alexis insisted she had been killed.

"A naked female in her 20s, found in the bushes," her friend Chealsea Turnbow told PEOPLE, "It's definitely foul play. This is something straight out of a horror film."

RELATED: Missing Instagram Influencer Alexis Sharkey's Nude Body Found on the Side of the Road in Houston

Alexis's mother, Stacey Robinault, said she wanted her daughter to be remembered "as someone who was loving, and generous, and so full of light and joy and how very desperately she will be missed."