How a Teen TikTok Star’s Fame Drove Her Father to Murder

In the predawn darkness of July 10, 2021, a deafening blast jolted Robert Majury awake at about 4:30 a.m. inside his family’s Florida home.

Majury, a retired police lieutenant from New Jersey, got out of bed to see what had happened and discovered that the home’s front door had been blown apart, apparently by a shotgun round.

Then he saw the source of the threat: a teenage boy in the entryway, dressed in what looked like a blue Walmart vest and wearing ear protection along with clear safety glasses.

The gunman moved onto the front lawn, but his weapon jammed and he ran off. Majury, 55, quickly returned to his bedroom, grabbed his licensed firearm and positioned himself near the front entrance while waiting for police, prepared in case the intruder came back.

Moments later, the teen reappeared from the side of the house and lifted his gun toward Majury. Ava’s father fired, killing the gunman.

Authorities identified the assailant as Eric Rohan Justin, an 18-year-old from Ellicott City, Maryland.

A Collier County incident report later obtained by Our News Outlet described Justin as “a stalker” who had located Ava’s address because of her “extensive social media involvement.”

For Ava Grace Majury, now 19, the attack exposed the dangerous side of online fame. Yet more than five years after the terrifying ordeal, the influencer appears not to have stepped back from public life.

She was 13 years old when she downloaded TikTok, the popular video-sharing platform beloved by adolescents. 

Within a year of posting videos dancing and lip-syncing to trending TikTok sounds, admittedly as a hobby to keep herself entertained during lockdown, Ava had gained over a million followers by 2020.

A career in social media has become one of the fastest growing industries in the US as children like Ava abandon typical dream jobs, such as a teacher or doctor, for the coveted role of influencer.

In fact, more than half of Gen Zers in the US want to be influencers when they grow up, according to a 2023 report from Morning Consult.

But as certain corners of the internet grow increasingly accessible to children and teens, both parents and safety advocates have warned about the dangers of minors being overly exposed on social media – especially in the age of artificial intelligence.

‘The whole kid influencer thing really icks me out, and in the age of AI-generated child sexual abuse material, parents need to be extra careful about posting anything of their kids online,’ Titania Jordan, a child safety advocate and the chief parenting officer of Bark Technologies, a parental control app, told Our News Outlet.

Ava’s burgeoning social media career initially came as a surprise to Mr Majury and his wife, Kim, 50, as he previously compared his daughter’s growing platform to waking up on Christmas every day.

The family, along with Ava’s brothers Evan and Logan, ages 21 and 15, had moved from their home in Manalapan, New Jersey, to the coastal city in southwest Florida in 2019.

A former police lieutenant for the Jersey City Police Department, Robert retired in March 2020 after 25 years in the line of duty. Kim, meanwhile, was previously an ultrasound technologist but currently works as a recruiter for a behavioral and mental health therapy service, according to her public LinkedIn profile.

But it was their teen daughter who had begun to build an empire of her own. By 2020, Ava was reportedly earning $1,000 for one sponsored video posted to TikTok. 

While each social media platform has its own way of compensating creators, Jordan explained that the amount of money a child can rake in typically depends on how many followers or online engagements they have.

A child influencer with a smaller following can still charge about $600 per post, while an influencer like Ava, with a million followers, could earn as much as $10,000 per sponsored post.

In October 2021, three months after the fatal shooting, Ava founded her own enterprise called AGM Creations, with her parents signed on as managers.

That was followed by AGM Projects LLC in June 2025 and AGM Socials LLC the following month, with her father and mother serving as authorized persons for both companies, according to Florida public records.

The couple’s protective eye over Ava’s social media endeavors appears to be a stark contrast from just four years prior, when her father admitted he ‘sort of discredited’ all the threatening messages that Justin had sent her, relegating the superfan to just another ‘keyboard warrior.’

Under the username EricJustin111, the 18-year-old gunman began commenting under Ava’s TikTok videos in early 2020, the family told the New York Times. But that wasn’t enough, as he later turned to her Snapchat and Instagram accounts as a way to get her attention.

‘I started seeing some comments that were a bit creepy for a 13-year-old to be getting so I had him blocked,’ Ava explained to ABC News. ‘Then I realized that they started coming in on different accounts.’

In an effort to quell Justin’s apparent need for her attention, Ava decided to take matters into her own hands by responding to him directly. With her parents’ permission, she sold Justin a couple of selfies that she had already posted to her Snapchat for $300 total, she told the New York Times.

But that only made him more insatiable, as he allegedly continued to message her on Venmo, a digital payment app, asking for ‘booty pics’ and photos of her feet. It was then that Mr Majury said he texted Justin himself, telling him that Ava was underage and demanding that he stop contacting her.

‘It seemed that [Justin] was very apologetic and, I guess, trying to be pleasing at that point – never knowing that he had this diabolical plan to just show up,’ Mr Majury told Good Morning America.

Justin was born in Massachusetts in October 2002 to parents Justin Dominic, a software engineer, and Jennifer Yesudhason. His parents were married in India in December 2001. Mr Dominic filed for divorce in India in 2015, and their divorce was finalized in July 2018.

Attorneys for Justin’s parents did not respond to Our News Outlet’s requests for comment.

In 2021, he graduated from Mount Hebron High School in Ellicott City, Maryland, according to a public LinkedIn profile. Just one month after graduation, Justin would drive over 1,000 miles to Ava’s home in Florida, armed with a shotgun.

‘Someone came to kill me,’ Mr Majury told ABC News. ‘I was in fear for my family’s life, and I had to do what I had to do to protect my family, and I made sure of it.’

Due to Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ law, which allows for the use of deadly force in a case of self-defense, Mr Majury was ultimately never charged for Justin’s death. 

Although her father took matters to protect his daughter into his own hands that fatal night, it seemed that Ava’s stalking nightmare was still far from over.

In January 2022, the TikTok star accused a fellow high school classmate of stalking her too. 

An application for a protective order filed by Mr Majury on behalf of his daughter claimed that classmate Drew Thompson, 20, provided ‘personal information’ about Ava to Justin over Snapchat. 

The filing, obtained by Our News Outlet, also alleged that payments were made from Justin to Thompson over Venmo in exchange for information about Ava, including her cellphone number. 

Her father claimed that Thompson’s ‘menacing’ behavior was reported to her school ‘to no avail,’ causing Ava to leave in-person schooling entirely and take up remote learning.

An office manager for Naples High School, where Ava graduated in 2024, told Our News Outlet they do not publicly discuss matters involving former students, and said they had no knowledge of how the school handled the incident at the time.

The TikTok star came face-to-face with her former classmate the following month at a hearing for the application for protection against stalking, in which she testified in court that she was having ‘nightmares’ over the entire ordeal.

In court, however, Thompson’s attorney Kristen Rodger said he only communicated with Justin because Majury asked him to help get her information for a police report, Gulf Coast News reported at the time.

The petition for the protective order was ultimately denied by a Florida judge as they ruled there wasn’t enough evidence against Thompson to grant an injunction for protection against stalking.

When approached by Our News Outlet, Thompson said he didn’t think he was allowed to speak about the protective order and abruptly hung up the phone when pressed for further comment.

Despite the harrowing stalking incident and its fatal outcome, it appears Ava hasn’t let the terrifying event cause her to retreat from the internet. 

In fact, the influencer is still active on both TikTok and Instagram, where she has over 1.18 million followers across both accounts.

These days, however, her content has shifted away from childish lip-sync videos and viral dance challenges to beauty and makeup content. While Ava previously shared she was raking in $1,000 per TikTok post, that number has likely doubled thanks to her stream of exclusive content shared with her most loyal fans.

On Passes, a platform that allows creators to monetize their exclusive content, Ava offers three tiers of memberships for her followers, promising behind-the-scenes content and ‘consistent’ messaging with Ava over direct message.

The first tier, her ‘close friends’ membership, costs $9.99 per month. For $20 a month, members in Ava’s ‘private circle’ are given 19 direct messages with Ava on Passes, as well as full access to her wall posts. 

And for her most elite circle of fans, dubbed her ‘favorites,’ Ava charges nearly $50 per month for all-access chatting with Ava in her direct messages, exclusive content over DM, and access to her livestream.

Unlike OnlyFans, however, Passes strictly bans explicit content and Ava’s public posts on the platform consist of innocent mirror selfies and bikini snaps. 

Indeed, such a traumatic event would likely prompt any parent to impose strict guidelines on their child’s internet usage. But it appears that Ava’s parents have continued to support their daughter’s social media career, despite the emotional toll it took on their family.

Nevertheless, Jordan stressed the importance of parents setting boundaries when it comes to their child’s social media presence. 

‘You are their first line of defense, which means you co-manage the account, you have full visibility into the direct messages, you lock down privacy settings, you disable location features, and you set hard ground rules around what never gets posted,’ the child safety advocate said.

‘You basically have to be a detective because a stalker only needs one little piece of information to really pursue and and cause harm,’ Jordan added. ‘I am surprised we haven’t heard more stories like this.’

An attorney for the family informed Our News Outlet that Ava is now ‘settling in college’ and declined to comment.