Third Teenager Arrested in Tessa Majors Murder

The boy, Luchiano Lewis, 14, was charged with second-degree murder and robbery.

Lewis appeared in Criminal Court in Manhattan on Wednesday alongside Rashaun Weaver, who is also 14 and who police believe actually stabbed Majors when she refused to give up her cellphone. Both have been charged as adults.

Weaver, wearing a blue button-up shirt and khakis, and Lewis, his middle school classmate who wore a camouflage jackets and gray jeans, stood next to each other as they listened to the charges. Both whispered to the judge that they were 14-year-olds and uttered the words “not guilty” when asked to enter a plea.

Lewis kept Majors from fleeing from her attacks by putting her in “some sort of headlock or bearhug,” said Matthew Bogdanos, a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Prosecutors said they had accumulated a trove of evidence, including witness statements and video footage, to build a case against the two teenagers.

Weaver and Lewis were ordered held without bail at a juvenile detention facility.

Under New York state law, juveniles charged with intentional murder, as Weaver and Lewis have been, can be tried as adults.

Relatives for the two teenagers as well as Majors’ father, Inman Majors, declined to speak to reporters leaving the courthouse.

Alexis Padilla, a lawyer representing Lewis, told the judge he believed the prosecution’s case was not as strong as it was being made to seem.

“If the video is so clear, why wasn’t he arrested much sooner?” Padilla said, alluding to evidence cited by the prosecution. “This is my client’s first brush with the law.”

A lawyer representing Weaver did not speak during the hearing.

Last month, a third boy, who is 13, was arrested and charged as a juvenile with second-degree murder in family court. That boy is not accused of causing Majors’ death but is accused of being involved in the robbery that led to her killing.

The 13-year-old boy was detained a day after the murder, which rattled the city and the nearby Barnard College campus.

Officials said he soon implicated himself in statements to detectives. He also identified Weaver and another 14-year-old middle school classmate as participants in the attack. The New York Times is not naming the 13-year-old because he is not being charged as an adult.

Investigators said they were not anticipating to charge anyone else in Majors’ killing.

Weaver was recorded by investigators implicating himself in the murder, saying he attacked her because “she was hanging on to her phone.”

The teenager made the admission shortly after Majors’ killing.

Weaver and two middle-school classmates had initially targeted a man, and later a woman, police said, walking through Morningside Park, near Columbia University, which is affiliated with Barnard. Soon, the boys turned their attention to Majors, who was walking up stairs in the park, prosecutors said.

Majors was heard yelling “Help me! I’m being robbed!” Moments later she was found face down. She had been stabbed four times.

She was taken to a hospital but could not be saved. One of the stab wounds had pierced her heart.

Those details were revealed Wednesday during a hearing in state Supreme Court in Manhattan. Weaver pleaded not guilty to charges of murder in the second degree and robbery. He is being tried as an adult and is being held without bail.

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It took investigators more than two months to arrest all three teenagers linked to the first high-profile murder the Police Department handled under the new police commissioner, Dermot F. Shea.

More than a week after the initial arrest, investigators took the unusual step of releasing images of one of the 14-year-old boys, asking the public’s for help in identifying him. In late December, detectives tracked that boy, later identified as Weaver, at a family member’s home in the Bronx.

Authorities believe that the teenager’s family was shielding him until a wound on his hand had healed, an official briefed on the case said. The official described the mark as consistent with a bite.

Several hours after being questioned by detectives, Weaver walked out of a police station house without being charged.

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On Wednesday, Bogdanos told Justice Gayle Roberts that Majors, who was a first-year student at Barnard, entered Morningside Park at 6:43 p.m. the night of Dec. 11. Weaver, Lewis and the 13-year-old had also entered the park from a different entrance.

“So they entered at almost the same time,” he said. “It turns out to be a tragic coincidence.”

The teenagers, Bogdanos said, had initially set their eyes on two others before they encountered Majors.

“She became intended victim number three,” he added. “They literally crossed paths.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .