A 15-year-old TikTok star and her family have revealed how her ex-cop father shot and killed a stalker after he showed up at the family’s home last July and blew the front door open with his handgun in an attempt to kill the girl.
Ava Majury joined TikTok in 2020 when she was 13. She now has more than one million followers spread over three accounts that she runs.
Most of her videos are of her singing, dancing or pulling pranks with her friends and family.
Last July, an 18-year-old stalker called Eric Rohan Justin tracked her down in Naples, Florida, after buying her personal information from her friends.
He showed up at the family’s home with a handgun, and fired a single shot through the door. It missed and his weapon jammed.
‘All I remember 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,’ Ava told The New York Times in an article published on Thursday.
Ava Majury, 14, joined TikTok in 2020 when she was 13. She now has more than one million followers spread over three accounts that she runs
Ava is shown with her retired cop father, Rob, in one of her popular TikTok videos. Stalker Eric Justin showed up at the family’s home in Naples, Florida, last July with a gun at 4.30am
Ava’s father Rob shot the stalker dead after he blasted off the door to the home in Florida (pictured). The family no longer lives at the home
Ava and her brothers – aged 17 and 11 – cowered in their parents bedroom, her retired cop father Robert grabbed his weapon and headed to the front of the house.
When Eric returned after hiding for a moment, Robert shot him dead.
He was never charged because the killing was deemed legal under Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws.
Police never made the details of it public at the time, but now the family are speaking out.
They told how they moved from New Jersey, where Robert was a cop in Jersey City, to Florida for a quieter life after he retired.
That is where Ava started her TikTok career and attracted Justin.
He commented on her pages under the username EricJustin111, bombarded her with messages and contacted her old friends in New Jersey.
They sold him photos of her that weren’t online and also gave him her phone number. It’s not clear how much he paid for her phone number.
Ava is shown as a child with her brothers and parents, Kimberly and Rob. They hid in their parents’ bedroom while Rob killed her stalker last July
Ava learned that her old friends had sold her phone number to the stalker, along with photos of her that were not on the internet
Ava’s parents then allowed her to directly sell selfies to him. She said they were innocent, showing only her smile which is what her TikTok account shows too.
When he started asking her for more explicit content, Robert contacted him and reminded him that Ava was a minor.
He asked him to stop contacting her and he became angry. He started texting friends of Ava’s, threatening her.
On July 10, 2021, Justin showed up at the family’s home at 4.30am and fired a shot through the front door.
Ava’s father Rob retired from a police force in New Jersey before the family moved to Florida
Ava, her mother and her two brothers ran to the back of the house and Robert ran for his weapon.
Eric then retreated, his gun jammed, giving Robert time to get to the front of the house.
When he got there, Eric reappeared and he shot and killed him before police had arrived.
Justin’s father told the Times that he chose to stay in America rather than move to India with him after his parents divorced, and that he had no idea he was stalking Ava.
‘He was a nice kid. I’m at a loss for words. I don’t know what went bad with him. He made a bad choice,’ he said.
Police found two cell phones that belonged to him and contained hundreds of photographs of Ava and some of her TikTok videos.
It’s unclear how he found her address. She says there is a boy at her school who was following her in December, and who had communicated with Eric Justin over text.
Ava is now being homeschooled.
Police at the time described it as a home invasion. They did not name any of the parties involved.
The teenager, shown in a recent Instagram image, says she can command over $1,500 from companies for her videos
Ava’s family say they do not want her to stop TikToking now because every day is like ‘Christmas Day’ seeing how many views her videos get
The police report however says: ‘The subject was most likely a stalker that resulted from her daughter’s extensive social media involvement.’
The family has now moved but are still living in Florida and Ava continues to sell videos on TikTok to brands, and post videos of herself dancing.
On the day of the shooting, Ava posted a TikTok where she lip-synced to a remix of the French Montana song Unforgettable.
‘Goodnight. You are loved,’ she captioned the image.
Her father said that it would have been too difficult to take her off the platform now, and that she shouldn’t have to give it up.
‘It’s like Christmas every day, because then you see it build. I think we just 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.’
‘Why should we allow them to stop her? Maybe she’s meant to bring awareness to all this,’ her mother said.
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