Man charged over TikTok star Mama Tot's son's death

A 20-year-old man has been charged with the killing of the son of TikTok star Ophelia Nichols - better known as Mama Tot. 

Randon Lee was shot and killed at a petrol station in Prichard, Alabama, in June, leaving behind his devastated family. 

Twenty-year-old Reuben Gulley has now been arrested and charged. 

Nichols, who has more than eight million followers on TikTok, has spoken about the arrest saying she’s ‘grateful but not happy’. 

She said: “I am not happy. When situations like this happen, or other traumatic situations, I look at everything. I don’t just look at this and this and make a decision or an opinion, I look at everything.

“And when I seen that mugshot last night, I thought to myself, 'My goodness, he's just a baby’.”

She said she saw comments from Gulley’s teachers saying he was a ‘lovely young man’, to which Nichols said she thought, ‘I bet he was’. 

She went on to say: “That just made me think within 11 seconds he made a decision to throw his life away. 

“There's one thing that he and my baby child had in common and that is that they both have a mother that would do absolutely anything for them. 

“So remember that there are two families that are hurting. There's two of us.”

Nichols said she hoped Gulleys’ family did not receive a backlash because of their son’s actions. 

“What hurt me really big was when this all come out was people in my town - people I grew up with, shop at the same stores that they do - made such terrible comments about my baby child,” she said. 

“I thought, ‘why? You don't even know him’. Then I thought, ‘Lord, I hope she don't go through that’. 

“I don't wish that on anybody. That was really hard for me. Neither one of our children should have been there that night. Neither one of them.”

She ended the clip by saying: “I know it's going to be a long road to justice. And I hope it's done right.”

In the comments, Nichols urged her fans not to tag her in stories about her son’s death, writing: “I wud appreciate for ppl to stop tagging me in ur videos of the news articles. Pls. I don’t need to see it every 5 min [sic].”

Gulley turned himself into police on Thursday after a warrant was issued for his arrest. 

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Topics: US News, Crime, TikTok

Claire Reid

Claire is a journalist at UNILAD who, after dossing around for a few years, went to Liverpool John Moores University. She graduated with a degree in Journalism and a whole load of debt. When not writing words in exchange for money she is usually at home watching serial killer documentaries surrounded by cats.