Pair accused of causing restaurant worker’s suicide plead guilty in Charlotte
Editor’s note: This article discusses suicide and suicidal ideation. If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org
A pair of South Carolinians accused of causing a mentally disabled Chick-fil-A worker to take his own life have admitted to sending threatening messages and pleaded guilty to cyberstalking, Charlotte’s federal prosecutor said in a news release Monday.
Trysten Anthony Cullon asked to borrow the employee’s phone inside a Charlotte Chick-fil-A on Sept. 5, prosecutors say. He stole it, then he and Jade Ashlynn Stone, 25, sent the worker and his family threatening messages during a three-day barrage of cyberstalking and extortion, according to court records. By Day 3, the worker, known in court records only as “C.T.,” was dead.
For sending those messages, the pair faces a maximum of five years in prison.
Both originally faced a maximum of 45 years in prison under charges of wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to commit extortion and conspiracy to commit cyberstalking.
Cullon pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit cyberstalking. Stone did the same in April. Further details of their plea agreements remained sealed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.
According to court records, the worker’s mother texted his phone after she learned it had been stolen on Sept. 5.
Cullon and Stone, using a phone they stole from a Fort Mill Planet Fitness, responded: “Your son is a pervert and I’m going to let his job and everyone else in his family know that. How dare he work at a Christian establishment while he is going to brothels and asking hundreds of women online to have sex. Unless you want me to ruin him and embarrass you I suggest you provide some compensation. He will lose everything. The things I saw were disgusting and disturbing.”
They said they would “expose this information” to Chick-fil-A’s manager and corporate headquarters if the family didn’t pay them. Prosecutors later learned they had also transferred money from the man’s PayPal, Cash App and bank account to themselves, labeling the transfers rent, gas, car payment.
His family shared the messages with him. Prosecutors said those messages sent him into “substantial emotional distress” as he “feared he would get fired or arrested.” One day later, on Sept. 8, he died by suicide inside his home — where he lived with his father.
According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, “research shows no one takes their life for a single reason, but rather a combination of factors.” Suicide, the foundation reported, is the 11th leading cause of death in the United States.
If you are in crisis, please call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.
This story was originally published June 3, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
