Murder of Tessa Majors

Tessa Rane Majors, an 18-year-old first-semester student at Barnard College, was attacked and fatally stabbed near Morningside Park in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, on the evening of December 11, 2019. Majors, who was from Charlottesville, Virginia, was walking in the park several blocks from campus when three teenagers approached her on a staircase near 116th Street and Morningside Drive shortly before 7:00 p.m. Police initially described the attack as a "robbery gone wrong," though prosecutors later characterized it as prolonged and premeditated.

According to a confession from one of the offenders, the three suspects had gone to the park intending to rob people and settled on Majors as a target. Two of them restrained her, including using a choke-hold, while searching for items to take. Majors resisted, refusing to give up her phone, and screamed for help. She reportedly bit one attacker's finger, after which she was stabbed multiple times in the chest, with one wound piercing her heart. After the attackers fled, Majors climbed the park's stairs and collapsed near the top before being found by a security guard. She was pronounced dead at Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital.

The investigation unfolded over several months. A thirteen-year-old suspect was arrested the day after the attack and charged with felony murder and felony robbery, based partly on clothing matching witness descriptions. Two fourteen-year-old suspects, Luchiano Lewis and Rashaun Weaver, were identified and eventually charged as adults with murder and robbery counts; DNA evidence reportedly linked one of them to the scene, and one suspect allegedly confessed to his incarcerated father in a recorded phone call. Police made efforts to avoid the investigatory failures associated with the 1989 Central Park jogger case, including video-recording all juvenile interrogations.

The case resolved through a series of guilty pleas. On June 3, 2020, the thirteen-year-old (by then fourteen) pleaded guilty in family court to first-degree robbery after surveillance footage indicated he had not physically touched Majors; he was sentenced to eighteen months in detention. On September 21, 2021, Lewis pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and first-degree robbery, and was sentenced on October 14, 2021, to nine years to life in prison, plus an additional sentence for robbery. On December 16, 2021, Weaver pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, first-degree robbery, and second-degree robbery, acknowledging at his plea hearing that he "intentionally caused the death of Tessa Majors by stabbing her with a knife." He was sentenced on January 19, 2022, to fourteen years to life in prison.

The killing drew extensive news coverage, partly due to the young ages of the offenders and partly due to racial and class dynamics between Columbia University/Barnard and the surrounding Harlem neighborhood. Commentators frequently compared the case to the 1989 Central Park jogger case. In the aftermath, Morningside Park saw new security measures, including 24-hour guard booths, expanded shuttle service, additional lighting funding, and increased NYPD and university security patrols.