Mugshot of student arrested for marijuana possession goes viral
A former student from Texas A&M Commerce University never thought she would become an internet sensation just months after being arrested for marijuana possession on her way to a party.
“I was actually bored that night,” said 19-year-old Marshala Perkins of Dallas. “I was just going to go out with my friends looking the way I was looking.”
After her arrest on February 6, her mugshot was posted to the Mugshot Baes Twitter account in April which garnered over 280,000 likes as of Friday morning.
Ever since, people have been asking for makeup tutorials from Perkins and retweeted her photo numerous times.
“Someone has reached out to me about starting my own makeup line. It’s crazy. My mind is blown,” Perkins said. “Now it’s turned into something so positive so I’m just going to embrace it and see where it takes me.”
On the night of her arrest, Perkins had just wrapped up a makeup tutorial on Facebook Live before going out to party with her friends.
“I sat in my car for like two minutes waiting on my friends and while I was waiting a police car pulled up right behind me,” she said.
The 19-year-old said a police officer from Greenville ran her plates and registration, which came back clean, reported The Star-Telegram.
However, the cop grew suspicious when she was about to leave after he smelled marijuana and told her to step out of the vehicle. After performing a complete search of her car, he found two grams of weed.
She was subsequently booked into the Hunt County Jail just before midnight, where her mugshot was taken, and released the following morning.
Perkins said she was embarrassed after she saw her photo on the Greenville police Facebook page later that day.
“People were sending it to me asking, ‘Is this you?’ At the time I was embarrassed so I was like, ‘Nah, I don’t know who that is,’ ” Perkins said.
That said, her mugshot resurfaced on the Mugshot Baes Twitter account two months later.
“I really thought it was funny because I know with those pages somebody has to submit it,” Perkins said. “I’m thinking, ‘Who over here is thinking I’m cute enough to be on this page?’”
“My phone started going crazy,” Perkins said. “I was still kind of embarrassed about it because it was something I didn’t want people to know. But then when I started reading the comments I was like, besides me being in jail people are really noticing my talent and what I can do.”
Perkins has since seen a sharp surge in her followers across various social channels including Instagram, YouTube, et cetera, along with a significant increase in appointment bookings for makeup tutorials.