The teenager who pleaded guilty to murdering 18-year-old Barnard College student Tessa Majors in New York City’s Morningside Park in 2019 was sentenced Wednesday to 14 years to life in prison.
Rashaun Weaver received the sentence for fatally stabbing the 18-year-old Virginia transplant on Dec. 11, when he was 14. At the time, Weaver and two others had ventured into the Manhattan park with the plan of robbing people, according to court papers released at the time.
“I want to apologize to the court and government, and your honor,” Weaver told the court before his sentence was handed down, according to WNBC-TV. He wore a black tie and a dark-red colored shirt.
“Mostly I want to apologize to Tessa’s family,” he reportedly went on. “She deserved to have a long life.”
TESSA MAJORS MURDER: TEEN WHO STABBED BARNARD COLLEGE STUDENT TO DEATH PLEADS GUILTY
Weaver’s family was in the courtroom during the sentencing and shouted that they loved him.
Majors’ parents in the courtroom on Thursday, as one or both of them has been for several past hearings related to his daughter’s case. Before the judge imposed his sentence, a victim impact statement from Major’s family was read aloud, and stated: “Tess Majors cannot say how being murdered impacted her because she is dead.”
“The family of Tess Majors doesn’t know what Tess would say at this moment about being murdered by Rashaun Weaver,” the statement continues. “They know she was against murder and violence in general and that she never harmed another human being in her eighteen years on the planet.”
The statement went on: “They have no idea what it is like to experience what she experienced. No idea what it is to fight with three males – all of them larger than she – for over a minute, escaping two times only to be surrounded and targeted again … How could they or anyone else know what she felt? The only person who knows what it’s like to be murdered early on the evening of December 11th 2019 by Rashaun Weaver and two cohorts is Tess Majors. And she isn’t here.”
The victim impact statement further described how the family misses Majors “every second of every day and will continue to do so.”
The teen’s attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, told Fox News Digital the court was holding Weaver accountable for his crimes committed as a “14-year-old boy.”
“[B]ut the court, the prosecutors office and society are ignoring the incredibly difficult childhood he had,” Lichtman wrote in statement, “as well as the cycle of incarceration and violence he grew up in. This was not a surprise considering his circumstances.”
Weaver was allegedly the first to attack the young woman after spotting her inside the park. After she passed the trio in the dimly-lit park while staring down at her iPhone, Weaver ran up behind her and kicked her hard in the back, court papers allege.
Rashaun Weaver. (Barry Williams/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(Barry Williams/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
TESSA MAJORS SUSPECT PLEADS GUILTY IN KILLING OF BARNARD COLLEGE STUDENT
A scuffle ensued and Majors fought back, biting and clawing at Weaver as she yelled for help.
Weaver’s friend, then-14-year-old Luchiano Lewis, held her in a headlock, while Weaver repeatedly plunged a knife into her chest, piercing her heart and sending the feathers of her down coat flying into the air. The boys were also with Zyairr Davis, who was 13 at the time.
The boys fled with her iPhone, as Majors collapsed to the ground after stumbling up a set of stairs and died.
Weaver wasn’t arrested for Majors’ murder until the evening of Feb. 14 — two months after the slaying.
The New York Police Department released three photos Friday of a teenage suspect wanted in the fatal stabbing of Barnard College student Tessa Majors. (Photos: New York Police Department)
TESSA MAJORS’ SUSPECTED KILLER, 14, JUMPS FROM CAR, SPARKING MANHUNT
He was charged in three separate cases and copped to the top count in each. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for Majors’ killing.
He also pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree robbery for a crime committed four days before the stabbing death of Majors. He and Lewis allegedly robbed a stranger, at knifepoint, of his iPhone XR in Morningside Park.
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The teen was promised a sentence of 14 years to life – significantly less than the maximum of 21 years to life – in exchange for his guilty pleas.
