A 14-year-old boy involved in the stabbing death of New York City college student Tessa Majors was sentenced Monday to a minimum of six months in a limited secure facility. The boy, who was 13 at the time of Majors’ killing in December, previously admitted to robbery in the first degree.
CBS New York reported the teen appeared relaxed and somewhat bored during Monday’s sentencing, which was held over video conference inside the court.
The boy will be placed in the custody of the Administration for Children’s Services for 18 months, according to a press release from the New York City Law Department. He’ll “serve a minimum of six months in a limited secure facility, after which the ACS has the discretion to release the juvenile and monitor his progress in the community,” the release said. “His placement may be extended until his 18th birthday.”
The teen was among a group of three at New York City’s Morningside Park on the evening of December 11, near the Barnard College campus where Majors was a freshman. The boy said that he picked up a knife a friend dropped and gave it to another teen, who prosecutors said fatally stabbed Majors multiple times. She managed to climb up a staircase onto the street, where a security guard found her and called for help.
A city attorney read a statement from the Majors family that described the pain they are feeling over losing their child, saying in part: “On Labor Day weekend 2019, the parents of Tess Majors dropped her off at Barnard College in New York City to begin her freshman year of college. One hundred days later, they brought her home to Virginia in an urn.”
“Tess would have turned 19 on May 11th. That day has come and gone without her. The Majors family has experienced their first Christmas without her, a holiday that will be forever tainted by sharing the month of her murder,” the statement continued. “The first Mother’s Day without her has come and gone, the first Father’s Day without her will be this Sunday. The Majors family wakes up thinking about her and goes to bed thinking about her. Her absence is palpable and unrelenting.”
On Monday, the boy’s attorney from the Legal Aid Society said “our client expressed that he was heartbroken when the victim died … he thinks about it every day.”
The other two teens, both 14, were taken into custody in February and are being charged as adults. Their cases are pending.
