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| 14-Year-Old Detained in Killing of Tessa Majors, Barnard Student | 14-Year-Old Detained in Killing of Tessa Majors, Barnard Student |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| A 14-year-old was detained in the Bronx on Thursday in the killing of Tessa Majors, the Barnard College student who was stabbed in a park near campus during what was apparently a mugging. | |
| New York City police had been searching for the teenager since the day after the killing on Dec. 11, and officials had taken the unusual step of releasing his photo in an effort to locate him. | |
| Ms. Majors, 18, was attacked by three teenagers in Morningside Park in Manhattan, and the 14-year-old detained on Thursday is believed to have been the one who stabbed her, the police said. | Ms. Majors, 18, was attacked by three teenagers in Morningside Park in Manhattan, and the 14-year-old detained on Thursday is believed to have been the one who stabbed her, the police said. |
| The Police Department’s chief of detectives, Rodney Harrison, announced the detention on Twitter. On Thursday morning, investigators were questioning the boy, whom the authorities did not name, at the 26th Precinct station house in the Morningside Heights neighborhood, near where the attack occurred. | |
| Ms. Majors’s murder jolted a city that has in recent years become accustomed to low rates of violent crime and recalled an era three decades ago, when many parks were considered dangerous to enter after dark. | |
| Ms. Majors, who had moved to New York from Virginia to attend the college months earlier, was walking in Morningside Park the night of Dec. 11 when, the police said, at least three teenagers, ages 13 and 14, tried to rob her. | |
| She struggled and one of her assailants stabbed her several times, the police said. A campus security guard found her bleeding to death on a sidewalk just outside the park near Morningside Avenue and West 116th Street. | |
| A 13-year-old was arrested the next day and gave statements to the police implicating himself and two 14-year-old classmates in the crime. According to two detectives who have testified at hearings, the boy said his friends grabbed Ms. Majors from behind and took a plastic bag from her pocket. Then one stabbed her as she fought back, the boy told the police, recalling that the feathers from her down coat floated in the air. | |
| The police tried to interview one of the 14-year-olds, but he requested a lawyer and declined to give a statement. He was released on Dec. 12. | |
| For weeks, detectives were unable to locate the 14-year-old whom they believe to be the one who stabbed Ms. Majors. The department distributed photos of him nine days after the murder and asked for the public’s help. | |
| The Police Department seldom seeks the public’s assistance in finding minors who are suspects in major crimes. But investigators, under pressure to solve the first high-profile murder under the newly minted police commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, seemed eager to find the wanted boy. |