NEW YORK – A 14-year-old male was arrested and charged in the December murder of Barnard College student Tessa Majors, the New York City Police Department announced Saturday.
Majors, 18, was fatally stabbed on Dec. 11 while walking through Manhattan’s Morningside Park in an attack that left community members in shock.
Police investigating Majors’ death previously arrested and charged a 13-year-old with second-degree murder, first and second-degree robbery and criminal possession of a weapon. A police source told Fox 5 News in December that the teen confessed to stabbing Majors. However, there were reportedly three suspects involved in the attack.
The 14-year-old, who was taken into custody Friday night, has been charged with one count of intentional murder, one count of felony murder, a count of first-degree robbery and three counts of second-degree robbery, Fox News reported. The teen, who is being charged as an adult, is expected to be arraigned next Wednesday.
The names of those charged were not disclosed by the news organization since they are minors.
Majors was discovered unconscious with “multiple stab wounds about the body” near a staircase in the park, police said in December. The president of the all-women school said she “was fatally injured during an armed robbery” attempt.
Barnard College, which is affiliated with Columbia University – an Ivy League institution across the street from it – has an enrollment of 2,682 undergrads.
“The passing of Tess Majors is an unthinkable tragedy that has shaken us to our core,” Barnard College President Sian Leah Beilock said during a community gathering in December following the attack. “We are all grieving, and trying to grasp the senseless tragedy that took Tess from us.”
Beilock described Majors as “an artist, a musician who played instruments, wrote songs” and had “just recently performed the first big gig in New York City.”
“In high school, Tess was the leader of Creative Writing Club, volunteered for political campaigns, was a cross country runner and a musician,” she added.
