In a long story, which just continues getting worse as you read the article at Yahoo News, then-14-year-old Ava Majury had eclipsed a million followers on the ultra-popular Chinese spy app TikTok after only about a year on the service. Unfortunately, one of her many followers, a now-morbidly-deceased 18-year-old, took his unhealthy interest in the online personality.
In early 2020, after Ava noticed [Eric Rohan] 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 information, including her cellphone number, which Justin used to call and text her. In another instance, Justin logged onto a classmate’s school account and did math homework in exchange for information about Ava, her family said.
Then things got more menacing.
In a series of text messages that made their way to Ava, and which the Majury family showed the Times, [Justin] 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’s mother declined an interview request.
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 Justin’s identity, saw that he lived hundreds of miles away, and reassured her that “he was one of these keyboard cowboys,” [Ava’s father Rob] Majury said.
“I sort of discredited what could have been a threat.”
But Justin showed up at the Majury family’s front door. With a shotgun. Which he used just as Uncle Joe Biden suggested . . .
Early on July 10, the fan — Eric Rohan Justin, 18, of Ellicott City, Maryland — 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 but fell.
Majury told Collier County sheriff’s officers that he returned to the house, retrieved his handgun and stood guard at the front door, only to see the gunman return a short time later. By sunrise Justin lay dying, shot by Majury.
On the plus side, Ava was making good money on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. In fact, she continues to do so with the support of her parents.
If you want to be grumpy today, I’d suggest reading the full article.