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14-year-old charged with murder in Tessa Majors slaying

NEW YORK — A 14-year-old has been arrested in the fatal stabbing of St. Anne’s-Belfield graduate Tessa Majors, New York City authorities said in a press conference on Saturday.

Rashaun Weaver was arrested at 10:30 p.m. Friday in Manhattan after being indicted by a grand jury, New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea told media.

Weaver is charged as an adult with one count of intentional murder and one count of felony murder, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said. He also faces four robbery counts.

An arraignment is set for Wednesday, officials said.

Majors, a freshman at Barnard College, was fatally stabbed near the college’s campus on Dec. 11.

She entered Morningside Park near the campus around 7:30 p.m., at which time police say she was confronted by a group of teenage boys who attempted to rob her and then stabbed her. She made her way out of the park and back to a Columbia University security guard station, and the guard contacted 911, according to police.

Vance said Saturday that some of Majors’ last words were, “Help me, I’m being robbed.”

She died at a nearby hospital from wounds to the upper body, according to the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office.

It’s unclear if Weaver is the same 14-year-old who had been questioned and released in late December in the case.

A 13-year-old boy was arrested Dec. 12 and charged with second-degree murder, first-degree robbery and criminal possession of a weapon, but Vance said Weaver is the believed to be the one who stabbed Majors.

Vance said his office and the police are “in active investigation in terms of other suspects, and that will continue.”

The attack, two days before the start of final exams at the all-women’s school, troubled city residents because of its proximity to campus and its apparent randomness.

Majors played in a rock band and had told an editor from a newspaper internship in high school that she planned to take journalism classes in college.

At a memorial service in Charlottesville in December, friends and family remembered her as independent, loyal and creative.

“She tethered communities who didn’t speak to one another because she thought we were all worth knowing, and that we should all be friends,” a teacher said.

Source: www.dailyprogress.com

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