Their Mom Was Murdered. Then the Phone Rang: 'This Is Tyler'

One of Tynesha Evans' daughters is calling Tyler Perry an "angel on Earth" after the star stepped up following Evans' murder in Georgia over the weekend. Per an Alpharetta Department of Public Safety post on Facebook, Evans, 45, was gunned down Saturday in a Wells Fargo parking lot; her on-again, off-again boyfriend, 58-year-old Othnel Inniss, was taken into custody and charged with murder. Per a GoFundMe page, Evans was a single mom with four kids, two of them minors, and thanks to a phone call the kids received after their mom was killed, they won't be evicted from their apartment. "I answered [the call] and the person on the other end said, 'This is Tyler.' … I said, 'Tyler who?' and he said, 'Tyler Perry,'" daughter Audrey Turner tells USA Today. "At that point, I just broke down crying."

Perry's publicist has confirmed that call and his offer to help to CNN. Evans' kids say she owed $3,200 in back rent, and their power was turned off earlier this week, per WSB-TV. Perry is reported to have offered to pay for the family's next six months of rent—WSB reporter Michael Seiden notes that originally building management refused Perry's money, but it has since acquiesced—as well as for two funerals for Evans (one in Georgia and one in her Wisconsin hometown) and college tuition for one of her daughters. "Now I'm going to get to graduate with a mathematics degree from Spelman College without debt. It means everything," Sharadiant Turner tells USA Today. (Check out the "gift" Perry gave Walmart patrons around the holidays.)