Killing of Tessa Majors
The killing of Tessa Majors occurred near Morningside Park in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, New York, on December 11, 2019. Majors, an eighteen-year-old student at Barnard College, was reportedly attacked by three teenagers who intended to rob her. She was then stabbed multiple times, resulting in her death. One of the suspects, a thirteen-year-old, was arrested the following day and charged with felony murder. Two months later, two fourteen-year-old suspects were also charged with her murder. On June 3, 2020, the 13-year-old pleaded guilty in family court to robbery in the first degree. Trial dates, in adult court, have not yet been set for the suspects who were 14 years old at the time of the incident.
Background
Morningside Park experienced seventeen robberies in the spring of 2019 compared to seven robberies the year before. The suspects in these robberies were mostly younger juveniles between the ages of twelve and fourteen. The robberies usually involved “the same kids over and over.” According to a report, Barnard College was absent from the local crime briefings in the months leading up to Majors’s killing though Barnard did receive regular briefings from the NYPD and a safety briefing was part of freshman orientation.Attack
On December 11, 2019, Majors was walking in Morningside Park, several blocks from Barnard College where she was a student. Shortly before 7:00 p.m., she was attacked by "between one to three people" on a staircase near 116th Street and Morningside Drive. Police speculated that the attack was a "robbery gone wrong".According to the thirteen-year-old suspect's confession, around dinnertime, the three suspects went to the park to rob people. They considered several potential victims but finally settled on attacking Majors. The suspect told police that his two accomplices grabbed Majors, put her in a choke-hold, and stole from her pockets. While one suspect held her the other tried to take her belongings, including her phone. Majors refused to give over her phone and struggled. The suspect also told police that one of the robbers stabbed Majors with a knife. According to a witness, a male yelled at Majors to “Gimme your phone.” Majors then screamed for help, yelling, “Help me! I’m being robbed!”
According to the thirteen-year-old suspect, Majors bit one of the attacker's fingers hard, causing it to bleed. Authorities theorized that the primary suspect began stabbing her after she bit his finger. The suspect admitted in his confession that the alleged attacker stabbed Majors after she bit him. Majors was stabbed several times in the chest. One stab wound pierced her heart. Her injuries also caused her to bleed “profusely into her lungs.” According to the thirteen-year-old suspect, she was stabbed with so much force that the feathers in her jacket came out.
After the altercation, Majors' attackers went through her pockets and fled and Majors, who was bleeding, staggered up the stairs. She collapsed at the corner of Morningside Drive and 116th Street. While she was still conscious she told a witness that she was stabbed and robbed in the park. Stabbed, she had attempted to make her way up the steep stairs found at the park's entrance nearest to the university. A security guard then found her at the top of the staircase. Police responded to the attack after a 911 call, finding Majors with multiple stab wounds. She was pronounced dead at Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital. According to the city's medical examiner, Majors died due to stab wounds to her torso.
Investigation and suspects
The day after the incident, the police arrested a thirteen-year-old male and charged him with felony murder and felony robbery. The suspect was arrested after being caught trespassing while wearing clothes and sneakers that matched the description given of the suspects. He confessed to the police that he and the two other suspects went to the park to rob people. He also confessed to police about his involvement in Majors' death, telling them that he picked up the knife that would later be used to kill Majors after his partner dropped it. He also told police that he watched as the other two suspects grabbed Majors and put her in a choke-hold. While one of them held her the other tried to take her belongings. According to the suspect, one of them slashed her several times as she yelled for help. After the older suspects stabbed Majors they went through her pockets. The three juveniles then ran away.Judge Carol Goldstein set the suspect's trial date for March 16. She also has denied requests by his lawyers for him to be released into his aunt and uncle’s custody due to the seriousness of the charges against him. In order to avoid the missteps that occurred during the Central Park Five case 30 years prior, police called in prosecutors early on in the case. Additionally, all questioning of the thirteen-year-old was video recorded.
A second suspect, who is fourteen, was arrested and released on December 12.
Police were unable to locate the third suspect, a fourteen-year-old, for two weeks, but apprehended him on December 26 after publicly releasing his photograph. According to The New York Times, detectives believe that some members of the fourteen-year-old’s family were hiding him until the bite mark on his hand had time to heal. After being questioned, the boy was released into the custody of his attorneys pending further investigation.
In January 2020, it was announced that the case against the two fourteen-year-old suspects would go before a grand Jury. On February 14, 2020, one of the fourteen-year-olds who had been arrested on December 26, was indicted by a grand jury. The New York City Police Department re-arrested him and charged him as an adult with two counts of second-degree murder, one count of first-degree robbery and three counts of second-degree robbery. According to a criminal complaint, DNA belonging to this suspect was found under Majors' fingernails.
In February, another suspect, aged fourteen, was arrested. He was charged as an adult with a count of second degree murder, two counts of first-degree robbery and one count of second-degree robbery.
Both fourteen-year-old suspects were arraigned on February 19 and pleaded not guilty.
On June 3, 2020, the 13-year-old male arrested the day after the incident, and who had since turned 14, pleaded guilty in family court to robbery in the first degree. Police investigation of surveillance footage had shown that this juvenile, the youngest of the three in the group, had not touched Majors during the crime, which the prosecutor said had contributed, along with his young age and clean record, to their decision to drop the murder charge if the boy pleaded guilty to the robbery. On June 15 he was sentenced to eighteen months in detention. Though Majors's parents were not present at the sentencing, they submitted a victim impact statement which was read in court. In the statement, they criticized deal that led to the offender's guilty plea and argued that he “has shown a complete lack of remorse or contrition for his role in the killing of Tess Majors.” They also said: “By his own admission, the respondent picked up a knife that had fallen to the ground and handed it to an individual who then used it to stab Tess Majors to death...The family can’t help but wonder what would have happened if that knife had been left on the ground.”
Victim
Tessa Rane Majors, also known as Tess, was from Charlottesville, Virginia. She graduated from St. Anne's-Belfield School in May 2019. Majors was completing her first semester as a freshman at Barnard College, a private all-women's school in Manhattan. Majors sang and played bass in a band, Patient 0, which had recently released an album. Her band had played its first gig in New York City that fall and was scheduled to play two more shows in Charlottesville during winter break. Majors also led the creative writing club in high school, ran cross-country, and volunteered on political campaigns. Majors had an interest in journalism, interning at the Augusta Free Press during the spring of 2019, and she planned to study journalism in college. Her father is an English professor at James Madison University, and the author of six books.Aftermath
The attack prompted new security measures at Morningside Park, including 24-hour guard booths outside the park. The operation hours of the evening safety shuttle bus have also been extended. Additional funding was promised for security measures at Morningside Park, as well as fixing the outdoor lighting. NYPD committed additional officers for patrolling the park, and Columbia University pledged more security guards. New York City Council member Mark D. Levine announced he was "committed to finding the money to put in the cameras we need for sensitive areas that aren't covered", speaking of adding security cameras that could be monitored in real time by police officers.Reaction
The incident garnered considerable news coverage and was referred to as a political football, in part because violent crime has fallen significantly in New York City in recent years.The case was particularly notable due to the young ages of the suspects; juveniles under the age of fifteen account for only a small fraction of those arrested for murder each year. In addition, the suspects are African-American and the killing is reported to have "resurfaced the longstanding racial and class tensions between Columbia University and the fast-gentrifying neighborhood of Harlem".
The New York Times has compared the case to the 1989 Central Park jogger case, which occurred nearby in the North Woods of Central Park; both cases involved "a young white woman attacked in a park and even younger teenage suspects". This comparison to the jogger case was echoed by Time and the Star Tribune. Gale Brewer, the borough president of Manhattan, urged detectives to proceed with caution to avoid an outcome similar to the jogger case. In an effort to avoid the mistakes made by police 30 years prior, all questioning of the suspects in the Tessa Majors case has been video recorded. New York magazine called it a defining, once-in-a-generation crime for New Yorkers.