Boy, 13, charged with murder after college student stabbed to death
A 13-year-old boy has been arrested after a New York college student was stabbed to death just a day before her final exams.
The boy has been charged with a number of offences including felony murder – and police say they are looking for at least two more suspects following the attack on Tessa Majors.
Rodney Harrison, the New York Police Department’s chief of detectives, said the investigation into the Barnard College pupil’s death remains “active”.
They suspects are all believed to attend a middle school near the scene.
The president of Barnard College said Miss Majors was stabbed during an armed robbery.
The 18-year-old, from Charlottesville, Virginia, played in a rock band in New York and had told an editor from a newspaper internship in high school that she planned to take journalism classes in college.
Flowers and candles have been left at a makeshift campus memorial and her family said in a statement that they “are devastated by the senseless loss of our beautiful and talented Tess”.
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The victim was walking in Manhattan’s Morningside Park, just before 7pm on Wednesday when she was confronted and stabbed during a struggle.
She staggered up the stairway to a nearby street, where she was spotted by a campus security guard who called emergency services. Miss Majors died later at a hospital.
Police have increased patrols around the park and campus, which is part of the Ivy League’s Columbia University.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said he was “absolutely confident that any individuals involved in this terrible, heinous attack will be brought to justice and will be brought to justice quickly”.
