Id Love to See All of Your Smiling Faces Again Ava
A Child's TikTok Stardom Opens Doors. Then a Gunman Arrives.
Their daughter's online venture plunged a Florida family into a nightmare, but they decided non to pull the plug.
Credit... Scott McIntyre for The New York Times
NAPLES, Fla. — Ava Majury downloaded TikTok when she was 13, and at the height of the pandemic lockdowns a year later had more than than a million followers. Her fans, nearly three-quarters of them male, watched her lip-sync and dance to trending music on an account with the profile message, "Hey, I beloved you!!"
In early 2022 Ava noticed that one fan, EricJustin111, was trying to get her attention in comments on TikTok. He messaged her in Snapchat and on Instagram, and turned up in online games she played with her brothers. Ava responded to him a few times at get-go, she said, "because I used to reply to my fans, like 'Hey, how was your day?'''
Early on July x, the fan — Eric Rohan Justin, eighteen, of Ellicott City, Physician. — arrived with a shotgun at the Majury family home in Naples and blew open the front door. His weapon jammed; Ava's father, Rob Majury, a retired police lieutenant, chased him off simply vicious. Mr. Majury told Collier Canton sheriff'due south officers that he returned to the house, retrieved his handgun and stood baby-sit at the front door, simply to run across the gunman return a brusque fourth dimension later. Past sunrise Mr. Justin lay dying, shot by Mr. Majury.
What began as an enterprising teenager's lockdown venture has awakened the family of five to how online fame tin can fuel existent-earth violence. In interviews with The New York Times, they spoke for the first time nigh an ordeal that illuminates the dark side of a social media platform favored by millions of children.
TikTok'south owner, Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., and many of its users emphasize the friendships, innovative content and creative collaboration enabled by the platform, but its enormous popularity among vulnerable, underage people has also been linked to mental health issues, injuries and deaths.
Today Ava Majury remains on TikTok, where she is netting thousands of dollars in sponsorship deals and has attracted interest from Hollywood, including from reality TV producers. Her TikTok fame has brought sponsorship opportunities on Instagram and Snapchat, also. Instagram, owned by Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has also been accused of causing mental and emotional wellness problems among teenage female users.
"Her creations, her contacts, her videos became such a big part of her that to take information technology away would accept been hard," her father said.
"We chose what'southward best for our family," Ava'due south female parent, Kim Majury, added. "Nosotros know there are going to be two sides, and some people won't understand.''
Paradigm
A 'Get-Getter' and a Lurking Threat
The Majurys moved to Florida in 2022 from Manalapan, N.J., lured past its warm climate, low taxes and a quieter lifestyle. They settled in Naples, a staid, safe community of flush retirees and growing families in Collier County, on the land's Gulf Coast. Mr. Majury, 51, is a former Jersey Metropolis police lieutenant, and Mrs. Majury, 45, is an ultrasound technologist. The family rented a home in Raffia Preserve, a subdivision of tidy homes on curving streets.
Ava is "a go-getter," her father said. When classmates in New Jersey admired a sticker she had designed for her laptop, she started selling them, somewhen earning about $700. On TikTok, she has promoted a molar-whitening product, emerging recording artists and North.F.L. games.
"I accept three TikTok accounts, so I could have one brand come to me and be like, 'Oh, I'll exercise $1,000 for one video on your main business relationship,' and I'll be like, 'Oh great, I have 2 other accounts that are different types of people on there,'" Ava said in an interview. "And then birthday, I'm making $ane,700 off just my name, considering I opened up three accounts rather than just edifice off one."
Her venture surprised and intrigued her parents. "Honestly, we had no thought the extent of what she was able to earn," Mr. Majury said. He has appeared in a couple of her videos, including i she made in the auto while he was driving.
"We both pointed at the camera at the aforementioned time and the music stopped and she starts laughing. You know, and so innocent, information technology was sweet for me. It's me and her having a moment," Mr. Majury recalled. The moment drew hundreds of thousands of views.
Downloads of TikTok grew by 75 per centum in 2020, making it the world'due south virtually-downloaded app that year, according to Hootsuite. Today the platform has more than one billion average monthly users. It welcomes account holders as young as 13, and in 2022 outflanked both Instagram and Snapchat in weekly usage past youth ages 12 to 17. While teens similar Ava take used it to entertain and spread positive messages, viral "TikTok Challenges" have been cited as inspiring children to vandalize and threaten their schools, follow starvation "Corpse Helpmate" diets and asphyxiate themselves. Teen girls have been repeatedly targeted by child predators.
A TikTok spokeswoman, Mahsau Cullinane, emailed a statement proverb that TikTok is "deeply invested in the safe and well-being of our community'' and added that the platform uses tools to protect users under the age of 16. In 2020, TikTok classified more than a third of its 49 one thousand thousand daily users in the United States as fourteen or younger, according to internal visitor information and documents reviewed past The Times.
Ava has two brothers, Evan and Logan, ages 17 and 11. She and Evan nourish a sprawling public loftier school where much of educatee life revolves around social media.
In early 2020, after Ava noticed Mr. Justin angling for her attention on TikTok, she learned that friends in New Jersey and Florida were selling him photos of her as well as her personal data, including her cellphone number, which Mr. Justin used to call and text her. In another instance, Mr. Justin logged onto a classmate's school business relationship and did math homework in exchange for information about Ava, her family said.
Epitome
"I had to unfollow all my local friends and Bailiwick of jersey friends," Ava said. "And anybody around me was like, 'Oh you're going Hollywood on all of us, yous don't want to talk to us anymore.' And I'm like, 'You're selling my stuff.'"
But Ava'due south parents allowed her to sell Mr. Justin a couple of selfies that she had already posted to Snapchat.
"I wasn't sending anything of my torso,'' Ava said. "It was only pictures of my face, which is what I assume that he was paying for. My whole matter is my pretty smile — that'due south my content." She said Mr. Justin paid well-nigh $300 for two photos, via the Venmo digital wallet app.
After that, Mr. Justin messaged Ava on Venmo with a breakdown of what he would pay for "booty pics" and photos of her feet, "stuff that a 14-year-onetime shouldn't be sending," she said. She blocked him on all her accounts. In Venmo messages viewed by The Times, Mr. Justin pleaded with her to unblock him, sending $159.xviii, and then $100, and finally $368.50 with the message, "sorry this is all I have left i'm broke."
Mr. Majury said he texted Mr. Justin's cellphone, told him that Ava was a minor, and demanded that he stop contacting her.
At that bespeak Mr. Justin's efforts turned sinister. In a serial of text messages that made their way to Ava, and which the Majury family showed The Times, he asked one of Ava's male classmates whether he had access to a "strap," or gun, shared plans to assault her, and wrote, "i could just breach the door with a shotgun i think." The classmate'southward mother declined an interview asking.
When Ava learned of the threatening messages, she called the classmate who had received them. He confirmed that he had gotten them, and forwarded others to her. Fearful, she showed her parents. They researched Mr. Justin'southward identity, saw that he lived hundreds of miles away, and reassured her that "he was one of these keyboard cowboys," Mr. Majury said.
"I sort of discredited what could have been a threat."
Prototype
'This Is All Your Fault'
Ava'southward bedroom was only within the door Mr. Justin blasted open.
"All I call up was, I heard it, I felt it in my chest, and I looked up, and there was a hole in my door from the fragments," she said. She ran through a connecting bathroom to her brothers' room, clutching a blanket, h2o bottle and her cellphone.
Mr. Majury bolted from bed and ran shouting to the vestibule, where he said debris still floated in the air. Mrs. Majury followed, dialing 911 on her phone. Exterior a gangly teenager wearing what looked like a blue Walmart worker'south vest, protective earplugs and safety glasses stood on the forepart lawn. He turned to escape and Mr. Majury sprinted forward but fell, gashing his articulatio genus. The gunman paused, struggling to clear his jammed weapon, then ran away. Mr. Majury retrieved his handgun, and was standing at the front door awaiting the police when Mr. Justin returned. Mr. Majury said he ordered the teenager to drop the shotgun, and when he instead pointed information technology at him, Mr. Majury fired.
The three Majury children had retreated to their parents' bedroom in the rear of the house. Ava'due south older brother, Evan, turned to her in panic and fury.
"This is all your fault," he said.
"The field of study was most probable a stalker that resulted from her girl's extensive social media involvement," the Collier Canton Sheriff's Function report read, citing statements to them from Mrs. Majury. "Since her daughter's involvement with social media, multiple subjects have attempted to ascertain her family's address in the by." Mrs. Majury provided them with contact information for Mr. Justin, the written report said.
The Collier Canton Sheriff'southward Office told local media at the time that a human being had been shot and killed by the resident of a home in Raffia Preserve afterwards firing a gun into the dwelling, in an attempted domicile invasion robbery. The function did not name the gunman.
The Majurys said police told them that Mr. Justin was conveying 2 cellphones that contained thousands of photographs of Ava and hundreds of hours of her videos.
Collier County Sheriff Kevin Rambosk and investigators from his function did not respond to requests for interviews. "This remains an active investigation and there are no updates," Karie Partington, a sheriff'due south office spokeswoman, said in an email.
The gunman's identity was confirmed past his father, Justin Dominic. Mr. Dominic, a software engineer who is divorced from Mr. Justin's female parent, said that before the divorce the family had lived in the United States and then had moved to Mr. Dominic's native Bharat. When his parents split, Mr. Justin chose to move back to the U.S. with his mother, his father said, recalling their move every bit around 2015.
Mr. Dominic, who said he had spoken with investigators, recalled his son equally a good student who did well in math at Mount Hebron Loftier School in Ellicott Urban center. "He was a nice kid. I'one thousand at a loss for words," he said in an interview. "I don't know what went bad with him. He made a bad choice."
Afterwards the shooting the Majurys, reeling, moved in with friends. A few days later Mrs. Majury received an invitation from a would-be agent for Ava to visit Los Angeles, see other influencers, and attend a couple of red rug events. One was for "Glo-Up Girls," a line of makeover-ready dolls advertised on a YouTube aqueduct featuring six teenage influencers "living in a mansion and taking on sensational Glo-Upward challenges."
"It was a nice lark, admittedly," Mrs. Majury said.
After the Majurys returned home, their homeowners' association sent a letter to their landlord demanding their eviction because, amongst other reasons, Ava'due south social media venture had attracted an intruder to the belongings.
In early August, Ava received letters on Venmo from a man calling her "babe girl," offering to pay $1,000 a month for her phone number. Her parents discovered that the human being's proper noun matches that of a registered sex offender, arrested previously for soliciting a 14-twelvemonth-old girl.
Mrs. Majury remembers thinking, "We tin't alive like this."
Image
New Opportunities and Dangers
Mr. Majury said he was advised by the police force that under Florida'due south "stand your basis" law governing justifiable utilise of deadly force, he was non bailiwick to prosecution. But only to be safety, he contacted a lawyer, James Scarmozzino, to represent him. Mr. Scarmozzino connected the family to other lawyers who organized a business centered on Ava'south potential earnings.
Michael Marino, an entertainment lawyer in New York, created an enterprise, AGM Creations, for Ava, and signed an agreement with the Majurys for a percentage of future revenues. Mr. Marino turned to a friend, Lanny Davis, a Washington lawyer and crisis manager whose public relations firm is now representing Ava.
The shooting continues to reverberate.
The boy who received Mr. Justin's messages nigh his plans to attack Ava still attends high schoolhouse with her. In Dec, Ava told her parents that he was post-obit and watching her. The family visited the high schoolhouse to report the thing. Last month, some other classmate sent her a video the boy had made of himself firing a gun at a shooting range, her mother said.
Epitome
Unnerved, Ava withdrew from school this calendar month and at present attends class from abode. Mr. Scarmozzino filed a petition in Collier County Circuit Court seeking an injunction for protection against stalking. A hearing is set for Feb. 28, and Ava will testify.
Ava is still on social media, with her parents' support. Mrs. Majury said she did not want "sick individuals" to force Ava off the platforms. "Why should we permit them to stop her? Mayhap she'due south meant to bring awareness to all this," Mrs. Majury said.
Ava has not told her followers what happened. "I don't want it to go out negatively and people retrieve I attracted him," she said.
Her greater worry is that other troubled people volition "make it a contest to see who tin get hither first,'' and she acknowledged that sometimes at night, trying to autumn comatose afterwards the shooting, "I'd think, 'I don't want to do this anymore.'" Simply by morn, "I thought of all the benefits.''
"Most people would say the money. And yeah, it'southward a huge benefit. Merely it's the experience. I got to go to L.A., the people that I met," she said. "Just being able to make other people smile is what I like, the enjoyment of seeing the impact I fabricated on some people'due south lives.
"I'd post a video at night, close my eyes, and in the morning it was heady to run across how many views I got."
Her male parent interjected: "Information technology's similar Christmas every twenty-four hours, because then you lot see it build."
"I think we merely had to allow her to make a decision and sort of support her. I think it's going to help her heal. It sounds corny, but I don't know what else you would do it for."
Kitty Bennett and Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/us/politics/tiktok-ava-majury.html
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