After first revealing their story to The New York Times, Ava, her retired cop father Rob, and her mother Kimberly disclosed new details of the shooting at their house in Naples, Florida, last July on Friday.
Eric Rohan Justin, an 18-year-old from Ellicott City, Maryland, traveled to Naples with a gun in July 2021, intending to murder Ava. He slammed the front door of the family house open around 4.30 a.m.
He had been fighting for her attention on TikTok for months, had gotten her phone number from her friends, and had paid them for images of her that weren’t on the internet, according to MailOne.
Ava also had direct contact with him and sold him two selfies for $300 which he paid her for via Venmo.
“After talking to both my parents, I thought it would be mutual if I got in contact with him directly. I said, ‘hey, can you stop going through my friends and stop contacting people for information about me just come straight to me and you can purchase it all from me.‘
He then started asking for more explicit content, and that is when Rob – her father – became involved. Rob told Eric to remember that Ava was a minor, and to stop contacting her.
It was gathered that she blocked him but he continued sending her money – $159.18, then $100, and then $368.50. It’s unclear how much time passed between then and Eric showing up at the family home.
When Eric showed up at the house in the middle of the night and shot open the door, he had a shotgun and was wearing a vest that contained multiple rounds of ammunition.
He was also carrying two phones, that contained hundreds of photos of Ava and some of her TikTok videos.
Ava, her mother and her two brothers reportedly ran to a bedroom but her father Rob, a retired Jersey City police officer, grabbed his gun and went to the front of the home where he shot Justin before police arrived.
Kimberly, Ava’s mother, said: “When that sound (shooting) went off we knew what it was, boom. I actually thought my daughter was dead. He was just standing there, looking at us for a few minutes. I think he thought maybe for a second I was my daughter in the doorway.”
The teenager died in the hospital.
Rob has never been charged and says he has been told by police that he is protected under Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws.
“There was no second-guessing, there was no time to rethink my actions. I reacted. I acted as best as I could under the duress and stress I was put under,” he said.
Earlier in the interview, he said angrily: “Someone came to kill me. I had to do what I had to do to protect my family and I made sure of it.”
His wife Kimberly said he reacted ‘perfectly’.
Eric Rohan Justin, an 18-year-old from Ellicott City, Maryland, traveled to Naples with a gun in July 2021, intending to murder Ava. He slammed the front door of the family house open around 4.30 a.m.
He had been fighting for her attention on TikTok for months, had gotten her phone number from her friends, and had paid them for images of her that weren’t on the internet, according to MailOne.
Ava also had direct contact with him and sold him two selfies for $300 which he paid her for via Venmo.
“After talking to both my parents, I thought it would be mutual if I got in contact with him directly. I said, ‘hey, can you stop going through my friends and stop contacting people for information about me just come straight to me and you can purchase it all from me.‘
He then started asking for more explicit content, and that is when Rob – her father – became involved. Rob told Eric to remember that Ava was a minor, and to stop contacting her.
It was gathered that she blocked him but he continued sending her money – $159.18, then $100, and then $368.50. It’s unclear how much time passed between then and Eric showing up at the family home.
When Eric showed up at the house in the middle of the night and shot open the door, he had a shotgun and was wearing a vest that contained multiple rounds of ammunition.
He was also carrying two phones, that contained hundreds of photos of Ava and some of her TikTok videos.
Ava, her mother and her two brothers reportedly ran to a bedroom but her father Rob, a retired Jersey City police officer, grabbed his gun and went to the front of the home where he shot Justin before police arrived.
Kimberly, Ava’s mother, said: “When that sound (shooting) went off we knew what it was, boom. I actually thought my daughter was dead. He was just standing there, looking at us for a few minutes. I think he thought maybe for a second I was my daughter in the doorway.”
The teenager died in the hospital.
Rob has never been charged and says he has been told by police that he is protected under Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws.
“There was no second-guessing, there was no time to rethink my actions. I reacted. I acted as best as I could under the duress and stress I was put under,” he said.
Earlier in the interview, he said angrily: “Someone came to kill me. I had to do what I had to do to protect my family and I made sure of it.”
His wife Kimberly said he reacted ‘perfectly’.