Robert Weaver Stop Me Before I Kill Again
3rd Teenager Pleads Guilty in Murder of Tessa Majors
Ms. Majors, a Barnard College freshman, was fatally stabbed 2 years agone. Rashaun Weaver, who was xiv at the time, admitted wielding the knife.
Two years after Tessa Majors, an xviii-year-onetime freshman at Barnard College, was fatally stabbed during an evening walk in Morningside Park, a third teenager pleaded guilty in the murder.
The plea in State Supreme Court in Manhattan brings the example — which sent waves of grief beyond a college campus — close to a conclusion. The story of three Blackness teenagers defendant of attacking a white student in a secluded park triggered fence over race, course and safety in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood where Ms. Majors spent her final moments.
The 3 teenagers charged in the crime were middle school classmates who were betwixt the ages of 13 and 14 at the time.
Rashaun Weaver, at present 16, was charged equally an adult and was the attacker who prosecutors said wielded the knife that killed Ms. Majors in December 2019. In court, Mr. Weaver, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and first-caste robbery, admitted to delivering the serial of strikes to Ms. Majors'due south chest that concluded her life.
As office of the bargain with prosecutors, Mr. Weaver, who wore a green long-sleeved shirt and confront mask in courtroom, also pleaded guilty to two similar robberies. He volition face xiv years to life in prison for the three crimes at his sentencing hearing on Jan. 19, Justice Robert Mandelbaum said.
The 2 other teenagers involved had previously pleaded guilty.
"It is clear, your honor, that no sentence or outcome will bring back Tessa Majors," a prosecutor, Matthew Bogdanos, said. But by inbound the plea, he added, Mr. Weaver "will save the Majors family from the trauma of a trial, and that counts for something."
Every bit the teenager was escorted out of the courtroom, a friend shouted, "I love you, bro."
Mr. Weaver's lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, said that his client was "securely remorseful."
Mr. Lichtman and prosecutors both noted that Mr. Weaver'south upbringing was marred by struggles. His mother had her first child when she was 13, his father was incarcerated at the time of his birth and several other immediate family unit members had been bedevilled of crimes, they said.
"Sometimes I think it gets lost when nosotros talk about all these horrific things. We forget that this doesn't just happen out of the blue," Mr. Lichtman said. "It takes a village, so to speak, to make what happened here."
The prosecutors considered Mr. Weaver's troubled childhood when crafting a sentencing recommendation, Mr. Bogdanos said. Only the teenager had likewise been involved in more than a dozen assaults of counselors and other incidents at his detention middle since April 2020, he said, which needed to be weighed equally well.
Inman Majors, the father of Ms. Majors, declined to comment as he left the courtroom. But prosecutors said the deal was acceptable to the family unit.
Mr. Weaver was the terminal teenager to plead guilty.
A 2nd boy, who was thirteen at the time, confessed when he was interviewed by the constabulary the day after the stabbing. He identified the other teenagers, pleaded guilty to robbery and was sentenced final twelvemonth to up to 18 months in a juvenile detention facility. (The New York Times is withholding his name considering he is a minor and was non charged as an developed.)
Last month, Luchiano Lewis, 16, was sentenced to nine years to life in prison afterwards he pleaded guilty to 2d-degree murder. On several occasions earlier the murder, Mr. Lewis said, Mr. Weaver had encouraged him to join him on trips to Morningside Park to find people to rob.
Prosecutors take said robbery was the three teenagers' mission when they entered the park on the December evening and encountered Ms. Majors, a educatee from Virginia who sang and played bass guitar in a band that had only performed its first New York gig.
Ms. Majors was not the grouping's initial target, but the teenagers turned their attention to her when they spotted her walking upwards a set of stairs, prosecutors said.
Video footage that was after recovered from the scene showed Ms. Majors struggling with them.
She bit Mr. Weaver's hand as she tried to escape, prosecutors have said, but Mr. Lewis restrained her in a headlock while Mr. Weaver stabbed her. One thrust pierced her heart. (When he pleaded guilty, Mr. Lewis did not draw having physical contact with Ms. Majors and said he did not know that she was stabbed until reading the news.)
Mr. Weaver was arrested later that Dec after an intensive manhunt, which included the unusual step, in a case involving a minor, of the constabulary releasing images of the assailant and asking the public to turn him in.
He was initially released hours subsequently questioning, simply charged two months after equally an adult — which land law allows prosecutors to exercise for sure violent crimes at their discretion. He pleaded not guilty at the time and was ordered to be held without bail at a juvenile detention center.
But investigators gathered bear witness tying him to the crime. DNA recovered from a fingernail clipping of Ms. Majors matched Mr. Weaver's profile, investigators said.
The teenager's own statements besides tied him to the killing. In a recorded conversation with his male parent, who was in prison house, Mr. Weaver said that he stabbed Ms. Majors because "she was hanging on to her phone" as the group tried to steal it, according to the criminal complaint.
The two other crimes that Mr. Weaver pleaded guilty to were both robberies.
4 days earlier Ms. Majors was killed, he robbed an 18-year-old man of his phone at knife bespeak, prosecutors said. And on the day he was arrested in February 2020, they said, Mr. Weaver had been office of a grouping who assaulted another man and stole his belongings.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/16/nyregion/tessa-majors-murder-rashaun-weaver-plea.html
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