A pho­to of the teenag­er ly­ing in a pool of blood, his back­pack hang­ing over his shoul­der, as a man fran­ti­cal­ly tries to staunch the bleed­ing is rock­etingaround so­cial me­dia in Venezuela.

The teenag­er was killed dur­ing a protest in San Cristo­bal, Venezuela.The at­tor­ney gen­er­al's of­fice has opened an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the teen's death.

Reuters re­port­edthat the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the death of 14-year-old Kluiver Roa re­mained un­clear, Colonel Ra­mon Cabezas, head of cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty for the state of Tachi­ra, told re­porters.

Roa died amid vi­o­lent clash­es be­tween pro­test­ers and po­lice near the home of Tachi­ra's rul­ing par­ty gov­er­nor, af­ter a po­lice of­fi­cer shot at the ground, Cabezas added, though it was un­clear whether he had died from a bul­let wound.

Oth­er stone-throw­ing stu­dents were in­jured dur­ing the clash­es, said Reinal­do Man­rique, a stu­dent leader.

The lat­est in­ci­dent come­sas ten­sions rise in­Venezue­laamid an eco­nom­ic cri­sis and a gov­ern­ment crack­down on the po­lit­i­cal op­po­si­tion.

San Cristo­bal, known as Venezuela's protest city, was the epi­cen­ter of last year's mas­sive street demon­stra­tions that led to 43 deaths. Con­tained protests have kicked off again in re­cent weeks in the city near the Colom­bian bor­der, where short­ages of ba­sic goods rang­ing from toi­let pa­per to med­i­cines are par­tic­u­lar­ly acute.

Last week's ar­rest of Cara­cas May­or An­to­nio Ledez­ma, a vet­er­an op­po­si­tion leader, al­so sparked some protests.

Crit­ics say the in­creas­ing­ly un­pop­u­lar Pres­i­dent Nicol�s Maduro is seek­ing to dis­tract his sup­port­ers and spook op­po­nents by jail­ing po­lit­i­cal ri­vals ahead of par­lia­men­tary elec­tions lat­er this year.

Maduro has coun­tered that the op­po­si­tion is backed by Wash­ing­ton and is plot­ting vi­o­lence against his so­cial­ist gov­ern­ment.

An AP re­port said that pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions sug­gest the 14-year-old was in­jured dur­ing a con­fronta­tion be­tween pro­test­ers and po­lice in the city, and died on the way to the hos­pi­tal, ac­cord­ing to San Cristo­bal Hu­man Rights Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent Jose Vi­cente Gar­cia.

Gar­cia said there was rea­son to be­lieve he was hit by a shot­gun blast.