A 16-year-old has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the 2019 death of an 18-year-old woman in Morningside Park.
On December 11th, 2019, Majors, an 18-year-old who just started her first year at Barnard College, was fatally stabbed in Morningside Park, near 116th Street and Morningside Drive. Police said she was killed in an attempted mugging just before 5:30 p.m.—and the three suspects were all juveniles, ages 13 and 14.
The murder raised questions about whether Barnard or Columbia University sufficiently warned students about crime off-campus in the park and resurfaced racial and class tensions in Morningside Heights. Majors was white, and the three teens accused in the incident are Black.
In June 2020, one of the teens pleaded guilty to robbery in Manhattan Family Court, admitting to picking up the knife that had been dropped while they confronted Majors and saying he had handed it back to a friend, Rashaun Weaver, who then used it to stab Majors. The teen, whose name is being withheld by Gothamist/WNYC because he was tried as a juvenile, was sentenced to 18 months detention.
On Tuesday, Luchiano Lewis, 16, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and first-degree robbery in Manhattan Criminal Court. Lewis said that Weaver had suggested the three boys "do robberies together" in the park and claimed that Weaver was the one who stabbed Majors. According to his prepared statement, Lewis said he was not nearby but "did see feathers coming out of her jacket when we were at the bottom of the big stairs that go back and forth" and that he knew "that Rashaun had a knife that night." He said when the trio fled the park, "I did not know that Tessa Majors had been stabbed, let alone killed." (According to the NY Times, prosecutors had said Lewis restrained Majors during the stabbing.)
"The next morning, I heard there was a murder in the park," Lewis said in his prepared allocution. "I looked up the story on a phone and saw a photo of the dead girl and I realized it was the girl we had robbed."
Lewis will be sentenced October 14th. Attorney Alexis Padilla, who is representing Lewis, declined to comment.
Weaver has pleaded not guilty, and his attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, told reporters outside the court, "This was not a premeditated murder as we heard inside. These were 14- and a 13-year-old boys and we should remember that."
ABC News reports that Majors' family thanked the Manhattan District Attorney's office and the NYPD, and added in their statement, "We remain resolute in our belief that all parties who bear responsibility for Tess's senseless death will be held accountable, and we are deeply grateful to the many people who continue to pursue that goal."
