Sixteen-Year-Old Pleads Guilty to 2nd Degree Murder, 1st Degree Robbery of Tessa Majors

Sixteen-year-old Luchiano Lewis has pleaded guilty in Manhattan Supreme Court to second-degree murder and first-degree robbery of Tessa Majors as part of a cooperation agreement.

Lewis has been charged as an adult and is cooperating with authorities against fellow suspect Rashaun Weaver, 16, though the cooperation is not part of a plea deal and no sentence has been promised to Lewis according to the New York Post.

Lewis was charged in February of 2020 in connection to the December 2019 murder of Barnard College student Tessa Majors. Eighteen-year-old Majors had been jogging in Morningside Park in Manhattan when she was spotted by Lewis, who was 14 at the time, Weaver who was also 14 at the time, and Zyairr Davis who was just 13.

“She had just walked up the long set of stairs and was walking toward us, but she was looking down at her phone,” Lewis said in a statement. “We were walking on the right side with the rails. When she passed us on our left, I saw Rashaun whisper something to (the 13-year-old), but I couldn’t hear what he said.”

“Rashaun turned around, ran up behind Tessa Majors and kicked her hard in the back. I watched her stumble. Rashaun started screaming, ‘Give me your money, run your pockets, I’m not playing,'” Lewis explained. 

Weaver and Majors then struggled on a set of stairs in the park stairs where Rasuan likely stabbed the victim according to Lewis:

I do not know exactly where the three of us were when Rashaun stabbed Tessa Majors because he tussled with her in two different places: near the tree when we first saw her and then again at the bottom of the big stairs that go back and forth, but at one point, I did see feathers coming out of her jacket when we were at the bottom of the big stairs that go back and forth. I know that Rashaun had a knife that night.

Lewis then recounted the conversation the three boys had after fleeing the area:

Once we were out of the park, I asked Rashaun several times, ‘What did you get?’ He just kept saying, ‘Nothing.’ After we started walking, Rashaun showed me his hand and said, ‘The bitch bit me.’ We walked together for a little longer. When I left them to go home, Rashaun and (the 13-year-old) were still together. At that point, I did not know that Tessa Majors had been stabbed, let alone killed.

Weaver pleaded not guilty in his arraignment hearing in February. Davis was charged as a juvenile and pleaded guilty to robbery in June of 2020 and is currently serving an 18-month sentence. 

Majors had career aspirations as a journalist and was only a few months into her freshman year at college at Barnard. In a letter to the court, her parents Inman and Christy wrote, “What words could be used to describe that grief? Compounding the sudden loss of their talented, kind, and beloved daughter, sister, granddaughter, great-granddaughter, cousin, and niece is the incredibly violent nature of her death, which has been described in grisly detail by the respondent himself.”