He would also have seen Tesss body just a few dozen yards from his front door. The college freshman was able to fight back, biting one of her attackers on the finger, police said. A campuswide text that went out to students and staff late Wednesday said one male suspect may have been wearing a green jacket and a mask. Hughes isnt just a Columbia undergraduate; thanks to a series of provocative essays on race in America for Quillette, hes also become, over the past several years, a hero of the intellectual dark web, a loose group of thinkers who reject the shibboleths of liberal culture (while keeping some distance from the Trump-era right). As of the 2020 U.S. Census, the city had a populati. This was weird, but not too weird. Tess was tiny and feminine and among her peers had started to use they/them pronouns, although she didnt insist on it. Murder, robbery, felony assault, and burglary all these plummeted between 2000 and 2018. Thats the thing. She was a first-year college student who moved to the Big Apple from Virginia, according to the school. Privacy Policy and They asked if I felt safe walking through New York, and I was like, Oh, yeah, I feel totally safe. And my dad was like, Its good that you feel safe, but dont be nave.. So while the elementary school at P.S. There have been 10 auto thefts reported in Morningside in 2023. . If the endangered Democratic senator runs again, he could face West Virginias popular governor. pic.twitter.com/3Trb5wQ1Dr, Majors' death has rocked the entire campus community. Im so concerned that they are going to use this as an opportunity to just fuck with young black people and Latino people all day and all night., At the same time, everyone is trying to wrap their heads around what happened. Lighting everywhere was terrible, the surveillance cameras ancient. For years, he says, he had been complaining bitterly about necessary upgrades and fuming about the parks status as a poor stepchild to Central and Riverside parks. At 6:43, Tess had entered the park from the eastern Harlem side; at around the same time, the boys entered too, by a different entrance. Derrick Haynes is speculating, but he fixates on an early news story according to which one of the older boys dropped the knife before the murder and the boy picked it up and handed it back. The older boys are both 14 and, charged with murder and robbery, will be tried in the youth part of the criminal court. Ramos-Luna asked what he was doing in the building, and the boy said he was visiting his cousin, Ramos-Luna testified. The incident happened around 5:50 p.m. on the 3200 . ", Last nights murder of a young woman near Morningside Park is despicable, unacceptable and goes against everything NYC stands for. In a statement, Barnard said they sent an emergency text notification alert "to all registered students, faculty, and staff about police investigating a robbery/stabbing inside Morningside Park. Police have arrested a 13-year-old boy in connection with the murder of 18-year-old Tessa Majors, a first-year Barnard College student who was fatally stabbed in Morningside Park on Wednesday. And a Columbia University public safety officer's post is located right next to the entrance to the park, on the eastern side of Morningside Drive. Overnight, before anyone had the time to process this violent death, let alone to properly mourn or responsibly gather evidence and facts, the murder had become a focal point in the nations most tribal fulminations. Most GOP presidential candidates consider a ban unpopular and unfeasible. Tessa Majors was a freshman at Barnard College when she was stabbed in Morningside Park in what police say was a robbery. The video was poor quality, the stills dark and blurry, faces unidentifiable. A 12-year-old girl allegedly took part in a spree of robberies around Morningside Park in April; long-time LGBT and AIDS activist Bob Lederer suffered traumatic brain injury after he was beaten and kicked in the head by a group of youths in Morningside Park on April 17; and in November the NYPD made arrests in a pattern of robbery cases in the area that "parallels this incident here," NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said at the Thursday news conference. Mourning the Tragic Death of a Barnard Student, the subject line said. It belongs, jurisdictionally, to the City of New York, but in reality no one cares for it. It wasn't clear if that person matched the description of one of the two suspects from the other robbery. But soon rumors began to travel. Host Roy Wood Jr. and President Biden made a case for why this goofy event is important. None of this was true, but in court the detective testified that bluffing during an interrogation is legal. She said that Morningside Park's risks were so well known in her circle of friends. Acevedo asked. The first text came at around 8:30 p.m. Barnard Public Safety Police are investigating a robbery/stabbing inside Morningside Park, it said. Im the youngest one, Im going to pick the knife up and give it to them. "It's not safe. I want to tell you, Taylonn Murphy said to me, sitting in his office at Manhattans family court, where he works to help people navigate the system, that was our worst fear: that someone from up the hill would come down the hill and one of the students would be killed. Murphys own teenage daughter, a basketball phenom nicknamed Chicken, had been murdered in a gang shooting in 2011. As police questioned and released two teenagers in connection to the stabbing death of Tess Majors, the community gathered to remember her and wonder how this could have happened. In April, Bob Lederer, a middle-aged gay-rights activist, suffered a traumatic brain injury after being beaten by a group of young teenagers. Tessa Majors, 18 years old, died Wednesday evening after a group attacked and robbed her in Morningside Park, said New . Not probably again. Its pretty desensitizing. Columbia University's public safety website. But 13 is the boundary. You have to be honest with me, he said, because this is very serious., The friends were a little older, both 14. The uncle responded with disbelief and something like fury. How can we talk about crime without talking about all the reasons crime happens in the first place? asks Amari Gaiter, a junior who is a member of Columbias Women of Color Pre-Law Society, which produced an open letter to Beilock and Bollinger demanding fair process for any suspects. Within minutes, McNab was encircled by six campus security guards and pinned to a cafeteria counter, his arms behind him, like a fish. Their kids hear the word killer and wonder, What does that say about me?. Acevedo and his partner, Detective Christopher French, sat on the other. The boy was getting good grades outstanding, in fact, in science, creative writing, and art. Chief investigative reporter Jonathan Dienst on crime, corruption and terrorism. People could go do what they wanted to do. He was in the park with his friends, he said. Thats a lot. At this point, she and her friends in the neighborhood prefer to reserve judgment. Theres so little unity or visionary leadership in Harlem, Metcalf says. Every student was told she could go home for break early, or request extensions on papers or exams, no questions asked. These are our kids. And upon arriving at the park, the grieving students found the gathering of hundreds had the tone more of a political rally than of a commemoration: The whole thing felt off. If Bollinger, the man who had presided over the universitys aggressive expansion into Harlem over the past decade, had looked out his east-facing window at about seven that night, he would have seen, in the distance, Long Island and Queens and, just across the park, the butter-yellow exterior of P.S. Im asking questions I already know the answers to. Violent. Sekou went on local news to denounce the language. Top news stories in the tri-state area, in America and around the world. Several attacks in Morningside Park in recent weeks some allegedly committed by children between the ages of about 12 and 15 have raised concerns among neighbors in the area. But he has been frustrated by a perpetual lack of funds. Young and violent. Reports of violent crime and sex crimes spiked 82 percent in Morningside Park and on its perimeter in the past year ending Dec. 8, according to the NYPD. The boy and his friends ducked into the vestibule of a building on 119th Street, and together with two other officers, Ramos-Luna followed them in. New York May Become the First State to Ban Gas in New Buildings. Add to List. Morningside Heights crime rates are 12% lower than the national average Violent crimes in Morningside Heights are 10% higher than the national average In Morningside Heights you have a 1 in 49 chance of becoming a victim of crime Morningside Heights is safer than 68% of the cities in New York Year over year crime in New York has increased by 5% Majors suffered multiple stab wounds to her face and body in the attack, police said. Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: As part of your account, youll receive occasional updates and offers from New York, which you can opt out of anytime. In the case of Mr. Giri, the police quickly arrested someone a 25-year-old, Vincent Pinkney, with a criminal record, who is accused of wounding a second person that same night, a Columbia. "Around 9 we got word that a first-year student had been fatally. It would have changed the whole scenario. (Its not clear whether the knife in his backpack was the murder weapon.). Despite being ranked among the safer parks in 2019, the park on W 116th Street had 11 reports of robbery through September compared to 10 at Brooklyn's Prospect Park and 9 at Claremont Park in the Bronx, according to the NYPD. The crowd grew and surrounded the circle of flowers. Kaplan pointed to the boys recent progress report: He had only been acting out a little bit and only with some of the younger staff, refusing to do things like get out of a chair. Or what to say. He wears a dark winter coat with a gray stripe on the hood that says Calvin Klein, and he keeps it on for hours, even when the courtroom gets stifling, until finally he removes it and then you can see what hes wearing often a baseball shirt, white with blue sleeves. Im being honest. Harlem residents Calvin Hunt and his son, Cameron, outside a court where one of the accused appeared. In the libraries, laptops and phones were open and glowing texting, thinking, flirting, writing, commiserating, and cramming all part of the same mental stream while back at the dorm, some found it necessary to take brain breaks, to do laundry, or to watch a crappy movie, as one first-year told me, like 50 Shades of Grey. I enjoy taking difficult classes and feel invigorated when forced outside of my intellectual comfort zone. (In the upcoming trials, we will see all this, she promised.) Coney Island closely follows with 49 and No. The statistics doesn't include Central Park. Tessa Majors, an 18-year-old freshman at Barnard . Even though the assault did not involve a Columbia or Barnard student, they wrote, multiple students saw the incident from our windows, and its unbelievable that we had to learn of information from outside sources to prepare ourselves. They continued: There has been increased crime in the Morningside Park area since last year, and there was an extremely violent attack in April that students were never notified about. A running list of all the alleged personal slights and rude behavior that may hamper Ron DeSantis in his 2024 primary battle with Donald Trump. In its absence, travelers would have to scale a cliff. I can tell you I know ten young men who look like this young man. Fathers, she added, took the poster campaign especially hard. She was pronounced dead after being rushed to the hospital. A law enforcement source tells NBC New York that investigators are looking into whether the fatal stabbing is connected to another robbery nearby that took place on Dec. 5. Or how to say it or to whom. This article was featured in One Great Story, New Yorks reading recommendation newsletter. If convicted, they will serve five years to life. In the backpack, he had a small collection of school notebooks, all blank You dont take notes, man? Officer Randys Ramos-Luna asked him and a sheathed knife with a blue handle that he said he was holding for a friend. 180 is overflowing, the middle school is moribund, an add-on, says Genisha Metcalf, who is the head of the PTA. All rights reserved. NBC New Yorks Ray Villeda reports. Ninety-nine Morningside offers a final opportunity to own on Morningside Park; 11 Hancock promises terraces and views of peaceful Morningside Park.. "A lot of people got beat-up, jumped, killed in that park.". The three boys were in the park to rob people. Cop cars drove up on the sidewalks, and the machine-gun chop of helicopters filled the air. Posted: Aug 18, 2022 / 05:29 PM MDT Updated: Aug 22, 2022 / 07:26 AM MDT ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) - Neighbors have been complaining about the homeless campers and drug users in Morningside. It was the fault of the citys socialist leftist corrupt politicians, tweeted former NYPD commissioner Bernie Kerik the day after Tesss death. This murder is really horrific, Sekou says. He also saw the child somewhat differently, as a juvenile charged with felony murder in the stabbing of Barnard student Tessa Majors. On the day after the murder, the baby-faced boy was walking near the corner of 119th Street and Morningside Avenue, not far from the park, with a group of six or seven friends, boys and girls, including one who zoomed ahead on a skateboard. On December 13, an assault occurred under Paulettes dorm window, and Barnard didnt notify anyone for almost two hours. Copyright 2023 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. After that, the older ones went through her pockets and then they all ran. All rights reserved. ", When asked why she wanted to attend Barnard, Majors told the women's liberal arts college in her application: As an avid feminist, I have striven towards bridging my community gender divide by being outspoken in my classes, taking an intensive course on social justice, and campaigning for a congressional candidate. You think I need this shit? Roosevelt Davis was 47 years old, he said, and for his whole life he had never been in a police precinct house. But beginning in the spring of 2019, the NYPD noted a surge of robberies in Morningside Park, 17 compared to seven the year before, and at the 26th Precinct, police detected a pattern. The teen suspect was charged as a juvenile with second-degree murder, armed robbery and criminal possession of a weapon with intent to use, according to a senior law enforcement official. Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2023. With broken hearts, the email began, we share tragic news. Paulette Arnold, a junior, was in the basement of her dorm, not 500 feet from where the attack occurred, putting her clothes in the washer when she received the email. Everything happened very quickly, within two or three minutes. In the spring of 2019, when Tess was still in high school, Barnard and Columbia undertook a massive rethinking of their approach to the issues of race and student safety after a Columbia senior named Alexander McNab refused to show his ID at the high Barnard gates. Earlier that evening, a first-year named Tessa Majors had been killed off campus, it said, in Morningside Park. Acevedo mostly didnt remember those, he responded coolly. The university spokesperson pointed to a "crime informationals" section of the public safety website that offer details about other incidents. Reporters were hovering everywhere, remembers Paulette Arnold, badgering students, seeking out the ones who looked more distraught. By the time he appeared in family court months later, the boy, who is 13 years old, did have a lawyer, from the Legal Aid Society, who kept pointing out that her client was a child. You cant walk there. Several hundred students and mourners gathered for a memorial service Thursday evening at Barnard. According to one senior law enforcement official, the teen made some statements to authorities, but the source did not characterize those as a confession. My friends and I were crying, we were pulling tissues out of our bag, and I heard someone say, Ooh, thats a good shot! Hecklers interrupted at every point. That was unsayable at the time. That any step toward justice must include considering Columbias relationship to Harlem. Barnard is proud of its legacy of graduating generations of independent-minded, accomplished women, and Hochman, like the other students I spoke to, didnt want Tesss murder used to incite fear or anxiety about walking alone, about being female, or young, about using public spaces. "Juveniles anywhere from 14 to 16 years of age arrested in that pattern," Shea said. "It is their responsibility as an institution to not just tell them about the great things of this city, but to also talk to them about the possibility of dangers," Sekou added. On abortion, Disney, and the presidents mortality, the long-shot presidential candidate seemed inclined to do almost anything to make headlines. Source: The Morningside-Lenox Park, Atlanta, GA crime data displayed above is derived from the FBI's uniform crime reports for the year of 2020. "I try to stay in safe places, places I know are . The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act requires colleges and universities that get federal funds to notify students about crime on campus or on public property "adjacent" to campus. (Theres a shuttle bus, but they say waiting for it is an annoyance.) Majors moved to New York from Virginia and was a first-year student at the school. Its terrible, says one Columbia junior, who reflects on the inadequate job the university does of dealing with depression and suicide, which (unlike park murders) are widespread. No one called a lawyer. Stories were legion of shootings in the park, corpses discovered, and encampments of the homeless. Crime; Barnard College Slaying Victim 'Shone Bright in This World' . . They considered and discarded several targets before settling, finally, on Tess, a small 18-year-old with blue-green hair. They werent disinvited. Photo: Andrew Lichtenstein/Getty Images/2019 Andrew Lichtenstein, Echoes of the Central Park Five were obvious to everyone, All the Texts Fox News Didnt Want You to Read, The Knicks Vs. Heat Rivalry From the Guys Who Were There. 180 are testing out to gifted-and-talented programs. At home, the boy walked the dog and watched videos on YouTube. It could be your best friend. Text chains with dozens of people on them were circulating, pleading, Say that youre here. In the library, young women began to close their laptops and go in search of their friends. the stabbing of Barnard student Tessa Majors, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. Rage-filled Samuel Alito Baffled His Fairness is Being Questioned. Although crime has since plummeted to historic lows in the 30 years since, Morningside Park's notoriety as a dangerous place is hardly a thing of the past. Why arent programs in the neighborhood talking to one another the Police Athletic League, and the library, and the churches, and the university creating an easy-access network of places where kids feel welcome? Tesss parents, who had remained mostly silent, were infuriated to see their daughter deployed as a political puppet, and released an excoriating statement. She came off, especially to other first-years just finding their place in a new pecking order, as almost intimidatingly confident, though others put it differently. In this Dec. 15, 2019, file photo, views of the crime scene are shown in Morningside Park four days after Tessa Majors, a Barnard freshman, was murdered, in New York. Mullins had intentionally or unintentionally directed blame on Tess, a young woman, for her own murder. In a pained email, someone in Tesss inner circle wrote, Tess was a big-tent person., In addition to the extra NYPD officers, Columbia University security promised more cars, more foot-patrol officers, more shuttle buses, and more escort services. Neither Bollinger nor Beilock was present but sent surrogates instead. ", "Institutions are responsible for that immediate sidewalk, the street in between, and anything on the opposite sidewalk," but not what's on the other side of the sidewalk if there is a barrier or wall, Boyer said. Explore crime rates for Morningside, MD including murder, assault, and property crime statistics. In the late 20th century, Morningside Park gained a reputation for high crime rates, and several groups devised plans to renovate the park. He looks like Tess, except his face is rounder and bleak. Scores of young women and men carrying flowers began flowing into the school shorty after 6 p.m. President [Lee] Bollinger and I are committed to doing everything we can to reinstill a sense of safety for all of us in our community, Barnards president, Sian Beilock, told mourners. Wearing an ironical nunlike dress and white ankle boots, Tess described her younger self as snarky and anxious qualities she knew kept others at a remove. Theyre not afraid of consequences. Its very strange, but on some level its like, Shit, another one of those. We got calls that the police were going to peoples homes, knocking on doors, intimidating them., The language used by police and the press to describe the suspects was concerning, too. This was a murder. They had police at the park entrances and exits, around the park, police on horseback. "Tess was an artist, a musician who played instruments, wrote songs - one of you today called Tess 'a blazing talent,'" Barnard College President Sian Beilock said in a statement late Thursday. You didnt want them to pick up a crack vial or a hypodermic needle. Emotions were running high, though some students dared to complain in low voices about the study time they were sacrificing to attend the event while friends shushed them angrily. McNab yelled, Take your hands off me, repeatedly, and a cell phone video rolled. But he could have not been a student. ", Her family also thanked the "men and women of the NYPD, who continue to work diligently on this case.". The savvy, ambitious parents who are transforming the school in its lower grades are also ambitious for their kids. You\'ll receive the next newsletter in your inbox. The problem wasnt the school; it was the whole inequitable system that sorts and ranks kids and fails to support, or even sometimes to notice, the kids who need the most help, those who are homeless, or live in foster care, who have behavioral or learning or psychological problems. A law enforcement source tells News 4 people are looking into whether the deadly robbery may be connected to another nearby robbery from less than a week earlier. Now, throughout the hallways where the first-years lived and where a group had recently commandeered a communal bathroom at midnight to help Tess dye her hair seaweed green, you could hear people scream. Why was she there?". The Central Park Conservancy has donations of about $50 million a year; Friends of Morningside Park, about $30,000. It shows a photo of one of the 14-year-old boys, the result of an unusual decision by the NYPD to publicize the face of a juvenile when its search for him stalled. Tess yelled, loudly, Help me! "The school didn't say anything during orientation," said Melissa, a Columbia sophomore from Singapore who declined to give her last name. Davis, who is a tall man, hugged the boy hard and long and sobbed with a deep voice. Morningside Park, where Tessa Majors allegedly encountered three 13- and 14-year-old boys and was fatally stabbed in the heart on the evening of December 11, 2019, has long had a reputation as a no-mans-land. Thats not fair to the people who live in the neighborhood, and it gave the consent to be treated certain ways by the Police Department and by the community., This angelic-little-white-girl thing, its just too much, said Monica Dula, a Harlem resident and an attorney at the Legal Aid Society in the Bronx. Police have arrested a 13-year-old boy in connection with the murder of 18-year-old Tessa Majors, a first-year Barnard College student who was fatally stabbed in Morningside Park on Wednesday.. The boy had been brought in for trespassing, but Ramos-Luna upgraded the charge to possession of a weapon. I was told not to walk through that park," Melony said. The community activists knew what was going on and, having watched the neighborhood for decades, understood what kind of conflagration could erupt, even today. A longtime Harlem homeowner looked at the police presence cynically, as a performance designed to quell the race-based anxieties of white people in Harlem and Morningside Heights. Seven years ago, after the death of Taylonn Murphys daughter Chicken, the school had been the site of a meeting between worried parents and the cops about an escalation in warfare between two local gangs, but as the neighborhood has gentrified, P.S. No one was saying, This is our community. Activists in Harlem argued with a grim logic that these were the heirs of the 2014 NYPD anti-gang raids on the Grant and Manhattanville housing projects, in which young men were rousted out of bed by cops in helmets with nightsticks and more than a hundred indicted; those young men had younger siblings, the activists said. National Abortion Ban Is a Trap for 2024 Republicans. The morning after the murder, Morningside Park was crawling with police. The security guards were put on administrative leave, and Barnards director of public safety was replaced by Amy Zavadil, a former dean with a background in equity compliance. President Beilock also hired a consulting firm to investigate the incident, and on August 15, she wrote a letter to the whole community, vowing to take the necessary steps to address any racial and other forms of bias and inequitable enforcement of campus policies., According to the consultants report, the biggest safety hazard had nothing to do with race. This is your life, he pointed out. Expect email shortly, including information about counseling hours. In the dorms, the first-years began to panic, Oh my God, holy shit, it could be anyone. White students mostly agreed, while students who disagreed stayed silent. If you live in that area and youre young and in the park, youre violent. The college freshman, an aspiring writer, played in a band and she recently had her first show in October, according to her Instagram posts. What We Know. He said he already knew what the boy had done and would be able to tell if he was lying. Networks pushed out top talent and companies from Disney to BuzzFeed imposed brutal layoffs in a dizzying series of cuts. Meanwhile, Majors' death has rocked the entire campus community. Youre not a bad kid, Acevedo said, at about 6:35 p.m. I can see it in you. A lot of the time, he added, you can be in big trouble if youre somewhere with someone whos doing something they shouldnt do as big as the person doing it. The boy seemed not to completely understand. When she was a baby, she sometimes wore a onesie that made her look like an astronaut, and when she did, her father, a novelist and an English professor, would sing this made-up song: Future baby, future baby/Goes so good with biscuits and gravy. And then, in a deep voice, he would intone, One day in the future, all babies will be this good. In her senior year at her private high school, Tess seemed to recapitulate that lesson of inherent goodness in a speech she gave to incoming freshmen. If you lie, youre going to get in serious trouble. He mentioned the stabbing. She was a first-year, one of them. A Barnard College freshman has tragically died after being stabbed multiple times at a New York City park. Looking back at the brawls, thrills, and temporary insanity of the 90s feud between the New York Knicks and the Miami Heat. 2023 Vox Media, LLC. I didnt raise you to be like this., When it was all over, Davis had to explain to his nephew that he was being taken into custody until the trial. And then there were the parents of older children who were friends with these kids, who might have invited them home.

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