[ad_1]
One of three teens charged with attempted robbery and fatal stabbing against a Barnard College student in a New York City park in 2019 pleaded guilty to second degree murder on Tuesday, authorities said.
The teenager, Luchiano Lewis, 16, also pleaded guilty to first-degree theft, said a spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. Lewis has been charged as an adult.
Tessa Majors, 18, was fatally stabbed in Morningside Park in Upper Manhattan on the night of December 11, 2019.
Lewis’s attorney, Alex Padilla, declined to comment on Tuesday. Vance’s office said Lewis would be sentenced on October 14.
During the attempted robbery, officials said, one of the three teenagers put Majors in a strangulation while the others searched his pockets. Authorities said the majors fired back and bit one of the thieves’ fingers.
In the fight, she was repeatedly stabbed in the chest, police said. She was able to stumble out of the park but died in a nearby hospital.
Majors, from Virginia, was a freshman at Barnard, a women’s college affiliated with Columbia University.
A 14-year-old boy pleaded guilty last year, NBC New York reported. NBC News does not name him because he is a minor who has been charged as a minor.
A third teenager, a 16-year-old who has been charged as an adult, has a case pending in court. NBC News does not name him because he is a juvenile who has not been convicted. He has pleaded not guilty to murder and theft charges and is due to return to court on October 18.
Lewis said in court on Tuesday that the teens were planning to rob someone but didn’t think any of them planned to use a knife, Vance’s office said in a statement. When they saw Majors, the teens planned to steal his phone, Lewis said in court.
Lewis said he saw one of the defendants struggle with the majors. He also said that when they saw a witness they ran away.
Lewis said on Tuesday he did not see the stab wounds, but saw feathers coming out of the Majors’ jacket.
Lewis said after the attack one of the teenagers said the majors bit him and he got nothing from the attempted robbery. Lewis said he only learned that Majors had been killed the next morning, when he saw a photo of her on a smartphone.
[ad_2]
Source link