TikTok’s beloved Mama Tot speaks out after Alabama man is accused in son’s death
When Ophelia Nichols, known on TikTok as Mama Tot, first saw the mugshot of the man accused of her son’s murder, she did not feel joy.
“He’s just a baby,” she said with a shaky southern drawl, sitting outside her Prichard, Alabama, home with the cicadas humming in the background of her TikTok video. “Within 11 seconds, he just made a decision to throw his life away.”
In those 11 seconds on June 24, Nichol’s 18-year-old old son, Randon Lee, was shot and killed in a parking lot during a marijuana sale, WALA reported.
Reuben Gulley, 20, is accused of killing Lee and turned himself in to the Mobile County Metro Jail on Aug. 18, WKRG reported.
Nichols documented her process through grief and her will to find the person who killed her son on her TikTok account @shoelover99, which has 8.7 million followers, many of whom rallied around the mother in support after her son’s death.
She also spoke about the shock of discovering her son was believed to be a part of a drug deal, sharing with viewers the reality of not knowing what happens when children are out on their own.
“We did everything we could to keep him on the right track but this past year everybody thought he was because he was doing so good,” Nichols said. “But (it) gives nobody the right to shoot my son. That’s all I know.”
Surveillance footage of the shooting obtained by WALA shows a person getting into a neighboring car at the gas station before jumping out 11 seconds later, gun in hand, then hopping into the passenger seat of another car that drives away from the gas pump. The shooting reportedly happened in the short time the person was inside the first car, WALA reported.
Gulley was booked into the Mobile County Jail and faces a murder charge, according to jail records.
“I’m getting a hundred messages saying ‘you must be so happy right now,’ and I am not happy,” Nichols said on TikTok. “There’s one thing that he and my baby child had in common. And that was that they both have a mother that would do absolutely anything for them. I’m sure they have that in common.”
This story was originally published August 19, 2022 at 3:04 PM with the headline "TikTok’s beloved Mama Tot speaks out after Alabama man is accused in son’s death."
