Imagine if your daughter, only 13, downloads TikTok and then after a year nabs more than a million followers — most of them male — who enj...
Imagine if your daughter, only 13, downloads TikTok and then after a year nabs more than a million followers — most of them male — who enjoy her lip-sync and dance clips.
Imagine one of her fans, an 18-year-old man, keeps trying to contact her, then buys photos of her — and even her cellphone number — from her friends, which he uses to call and text her.
Imagine this guy tells your daughter what he would pay for photos of her feet and rear end. Imagine if this fan sends your daughter hundreds of dollars in the hope that she will unblock him.
Imagine that you text this guy, inform him your daughter is a minor, and tell him stop contacting her.
Now imagine it doesn't work — and only gets worse. And in a a terrifying and deadly manner.
The aforementioned scenario is exactly what happened to TikTok star Ava Majury and her parents and siblings in the summer of 2020, according to the New York Times.
What are the details?
Indeed, Ava's 18-year-old stalker — Eric Rohan Justin of Ellicott City, Maryland — was getting downright scary. The Times said text messages that made their way to Ava indicated that he asked one of her male classmates if he had access to a “strap,” or gun, and shared plans to assault her — and added, “i could just breach the door with a shotgun i think.”
That's exactly what he did.
Early on July 10 that year, Justin showed up at the Majury home in Naples, Florida, and blew open the front door with a shotgun, the Times said.
With that, Ava’s father, Rob Majury — a retired police lieutenant who's the one who ordered Justin to stop contacting his daughter — chased after him but fell to the ground, the paper said.
When Majury got back to his house, he grabbed a gun and stood guard at the front door in case Justin returned before police arrived, the Times said.
Sure enough, Justin came back, the paper said.
Majury said he ordered him to drop his shotgun, but Majury fired when Justin instead pointed the weapon at him, the Times said.
By sunrise Justin lay dying, the paper reported.
Majury told the Times that police have assured him that under Florida's “stand your ground” law — which outlines legal use of deadly force — he was not subject to prosecution.
The aftermath
Despite the world of trouble Ava and her family experienced after she rose to fame on TikTok, the 14-year-old is still active on the popular social media platform, the paper said.
The Times noted that Ava's notoriety has translated into thousands of dollars in sponsorship deals and interest from Hollywood, including from reality TV producers.
“I have three TikTok accounts, so I could have one brand come to me and be like, ‘Oh, I’ll do $1,000 for one video on your main account,’ and I’ll be like, ‘Oh great, I have two other accounts that are different types of people on there,’” Ava explained to the paper. “So altogether, I’m making $1,700 off just my name, because I opened up three accounts rather than just building off one.”
Her dad added to the Times that Ava's "creations, her contacts, her videos became such a big part of her that to take it away would have been hard." Her mother Kim noted to the Times that "we chose what’s best for our family. We know there are going to be two sides, and some people won’t understand.″
Still, not long after her dad shot her stalker dead, Ava got messages from a man who referred to her as “baby girl" and offered to pay $1,000 a month for her phone number, the paper said, adding that Ava's mom and dad found out his name matches the name of a registered sex offender who had been arrested for soliciting a 14-year-old girl.
What's more, Ava told her parents that the boy who received Justin’s menacing messages was following and watching her, the Times said, and another classmate recorded a video of himself firing at a shooting range and sent the clip to Ava.
Finally Ava withdrew from school this month, the paper said, and now she attends class from home.
Nevertheless her mom told the Times she doesn't want “sick individuals” to force Ava to shun social media: “Why should we allow them to stop her? Maybe she’s meant to bring awareness to all this."
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