Catherine Nicole Cando, the Ecuadorian beauty queen, has died following a botched cosmetic procedure. She suffered complications from the liposuction she received on Saturday. The procedure that killed her was a prize from the Duran beauty pageant which she won in Guayas, Ecuador in October 2015.

Cando was a part-time model and studying to be a doctor at the Catholic University of Santiago de Guayaquil. She passed away at the age of 19.

According to New York Daily News, the beauty queen's brother, Daniel Zavala, said that his sister initially turned down the offer to get liposuction. She insisted that she can just go on diet and exercise to lose weight and as for her prize, she would have given it to someone who needs it more than she does.

However, the brother revealed that Catherine received numerous calls from Dr. Gustavo Berh who was one of the judges at the Duran pageant. He prodded her to undergo plastic surgery to supposedly remove the extra weight so she can look better in the future competitions.

"Before having the surgery, she received a lot of calls from the surgeon trying to persuade her to do it, but she kept saying no. She was thinking about letting someone else have it as a freebie but eventually she agreed to have it just to get him off her back," Zavela said in a statement to Daily Mail UK.

The doctor convinced her by saying that the liposuction certificate is not transferable and giving her the assurance that she would shed at least three centimeters from her waistline. It was learned that it was also Dr. Berh who offered the free liposuction as a prize so it was not really part of the official benefits for the winner. Originally, the pageant organizers only arranged for a brand a new Aveo car and a tablet computer as prizes.

Local media in Ecuador reported that the plastic surgeon wanted to use Cando as an image model for his clinic so he earnestly persuaded her.

"It was a marketing strategy by the surgeon, Gustavo Berh," the Duran city government said in a statement on Mail Online.

Meanwhile, Cando went to Berh's clinic in Guayaquil on Saturday. She was to undergo a 2-hour surgery but after almost 10 hours, she still did not come out of the clinic.

Her family was then informed by clinic staff that Catherine died during the procedure, citing cardiac arrest as the cause. But health officials declare the Miss Duran died from cerebral edema -- a condition where fluids accumulate in the brain.

It was noted that Catherine's death certificate showed that she passed away due to hypovolemic shock which only happens when the body loses too much blood.

In the midst of conflicting details, Cando's family filed a medical malpractice case through lawyer Carlos Reyes Izquierdo. The doctors involved have already been arrested for suspected negligence.