A popular TikToker was arrested Tuesday as a ‘person of interest’ in the murder of a Louisiana therapist, shocking his millions of online fans.
Terryon Ishmael Thomas, a 20-year-old video creator known as “Mr. Prada” on the social media platform, was taken into custody in Dallas, Texas, following a police manhunt, WVUE reported.
Thomas, who has over 8.2 million followers on two TikTok pages, is a person of interest in the death of 69-year-old William Nicholas Abraham, whose body was found Sunday wrapped in a tarp and dumped in a ditch on the side of Highway 51 in southeastern Louisiana.
Tangipahoa Parish officials said Abraham, who was also a Catholic priest for 14 years, was killed by blunt force trauma to the head, neck, and shoulders.
Sheriff Gerald Sticker said it was a “very physical, very violent death.”
On Monday, a Baton Rouge police officer unsuccessfully attempted to stop Thomas, who was allegedly driving Abraham’s car. The TikToker allegedly backed into the cop’s vehicle before fleeing on foot.
A warrant for the influencer’s arrest was executed in Dallas on Tuesday by the U.S. Marshal’s North Texas Fugitive Task Force, the Baton Rouge Police Department said in a press release.
Thomas was arrested on charges of “Aggravated Criminal Damage to Property, Resisting an Officer, and Unauthorized Use of a Motor Vehicle.”
Followers of “Mr. Prada” uncovered reports that Abraham was accused of molesting an 11-year-old male patient in 2015, and theorized that it could be related to the alleged murder.
“Hearing that Mr Prada allegedly was SA’d [sexually assaulted] by his therapist, told police and they did nothing and now he’s facing charges for killing the therapist is insane,” said one X user:
“People need to believe victims so they don’t turn into suspects. That boy been crying for help for months,” the account added.
“The amount of creators failing to mention the possible sexual assault of mr prada by that therapist is very disgusting actually,” another user wrote:
Despite online conjecture that Thomas could have been the boy in that incident from nearly 10 years ago, the attorney who represented the therapist in the case told WAFB that it was “unequivocally not him.”
While Abraham was temporarily jailed for the alleged offense after the accusation was made, the case was never brought to trial.
”While there was probable cause for an arrest, my office had to determine if the evidence supported our burden at trial which is proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” District Attorney Hillar Moore told the local outlet after the news of Abraham’s death broke. “This matter was under review by my office for approximately two years. After considering all available evidence, the best interest of the child, and the lack of any inculpatory statements by the arrestee, we declined to institute formal charges.”
As of Wednesday, Thomas has not been charged with Abraham’s murder.
Sheriff Sticker said that investigators are seeking “any information that the public can give us to help us put the picture together of Saturday … evening, before he was ultimately murdered – which we believe occurred sometime Saturday night,” in a statement obtained by the Daily Mail.
The victim’s brother, Tommy Abraham, told WBRZ that he wants answers.
“I want to know who did it, and I want to know why,” he told the outlet. “I watch the news every night, and I just sit back there and cringe when I hear someone killed somebody. It’s just not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s just not the way it’s supposed to be.”
Some of “Mr Prada’s” followers also pointed out that he had previously posted a video captioned, “practicing for my mugshot cus this might be the year someone gonna meet God if they piss me off too much”:
“No one should take a life but God. No one,” Tommy Abraham said in another statement to WWLTV, “He’s the only one that can take a life and for someone to take someone else’s life, you’re a coward.”
Abraham was well-known in the Baton Rouge area, and even had weekly appearances on WBRZ’s Weekends with Whitney.
