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'Our Hearts Ache': NYC Teen Sentenced To 9 Years In Prison For Tessa Majors Murder
“Tess was a friend to the friendless and kind in all the little ways that people remember forever,” Tessa Majors' family said in a victim impact statement.
A 16-year-old New York teen was sentenced to nine years behind bars for last year’s fatal stabbing of Barnard College student Tessa Majors.
Luchiano Lewis was sentenced nine years to life on Thursday, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. He was charged as an adult and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and first-degree robbery in Majors’ death.
On Dec. 11, 2019, Majors, 18, was stabbed to death in Morningside Park in Upper Manhattan by a group of teens during a botched robbery, according to the indictment. A grainy surveillance video captured the deadly attack.
The case’s second suspect, also 16, is facing second-degree murder and robbery charges in Majors’ slaying. Because he's still a minor and has pleaded not guilty, Oxygen.com is not naming him.
The third suspect, who was 13 at the time of Majors’ stabbing, and is not being named because he was charged as a juvenile, previously pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to 18 months in a juvenile detention facility, according to prosecutors.
Lewis admitted to robbing victims with Weaver in Morningside Park prior to Majors’ murder.
Majors was studying at Columbia University’s Barnard College at the time of her death.
Her family, who described her as a “brilliant” scholar and a “voracious reader,” was a poet and aspiring journalist, according to a victim impact statement read in court by prosecutors.
“She had big dreams,” Majors’ family wrote in the impact statement. “She loved everything about music, writing it, performing it, listening to it. She volunteered at the local animal shelter. She spent summers attending Nature Camp, where she loved learning about the environment and the natural world around her. She loved meeting new people with different ideas and beliefs than her own.”
Majors’ family also spoke of the late 18-year-old’s love for her younger brother. She was a cat-lover, they said.
“Tess was a friend to the friendless and kind in all the little ways that people remember forever,” the victim impact statement added. “And she was brave. Her family misses her every moment of every day.
The family, describing the misery that has enveloped their lives since Majors’ killing, said they’ve had “little closure” in the two years since her death.
“Our hearts ache as we watch Tess’ friends return to school, perform concerts, start new jobs, and experience all the things that our daughter never will,” they said. “It is hard for many old friends to be around us,” the statement said. “Our grief is too profound. We are too changed from the people we used to be.”
Her grieving parents also explained how the case’s gut wrenching, drawn-out legal proceedings have forced them to continually re-live their daughter’s violent death.
“We have not been able to grieve our daughter properly or in peace,” the statement added.
A spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on Lewis' sentencing on Friday. Weaver is scheduled back in court on Jan. 18, 2022.
