NEW YORK _ Police have arrested a 13-year-old boy they say played a role in the killing of Barnard College freshman Tessa Majors during a robbery in New York, sources said Friday.
The suspect was charged after he was brought in for questioning and then confessed, according to sources. Two other teens involved in the robbery are still being sought, sources said.
The teen has been charged with murder, robbery and weapons possession. His name was not immediately released.
Police said Majors was stabbed to death Wednesday evening after descending the steps of Morningside Park in Harlem near the Columbia University campus. Barnard is a women's college affiliated with Columbia, and its students use Columbia's campus and facilities.
On Thursday afternoon, cops were searching the area when they saw the teen inside a W. 119th Street apartment building wearing clothes that matched a description of one of Majors' killers, sources with knowledge of the case said.
Cops arrested the teen for criminal trespass and found a knife on him. When he was back at the station house, he admitted that he and his two friends had robbed a girl and stabbed her, sources said.
Majors was jogging down a set of steps in the park on W. 116th Street near Morningside Drive shortly before 7 p.m. when at least two men confronted her and one of them stabbed her with a knife, said investigators who reviewed surveillance video.
Sources said she was slashed on her chin and stabbed underneath her arm where her heart was pierced by the knife.
Majors managed to stagger back up the park's steps to a Columbia guard booth, where a security officer saw the collapsed teen and called 911.
Majors was rushed to Mount Sinai St. Luke's Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Scores of area college students mourned Majors at a vigil on the Barnard College campus Thursday night.
Majors' grieving parents, who traveled to New York from their home in Virginia, said they were heartbroken over their daughter's death.
"We lost a very special, very talented, and very well-loved young woman," the family said in a statement. "Tess shone bright in this world, and our hearts will never be the same."
Robberies have spiked steeply in Morningside Park this year, city data shows.
Eleven robberies have been recorded inside the park this year through Sept. 30, more than double the five robberies reported in the same period of 2018. One assault has been reported in the park each year, statistics show.
