The 14-year-old who police say killed Barnard College freshman Tessa Majors may have stabbed her because she bit his finger during a botched robbery.
Majors, 18, was walking in a New York City park earlier this month when three young teenagers allegedly mugged her. Sources in law enforcement said they believe she bit the middle schooler’s finger during the incident, enraging the teen and causing him to stab her repeatedly, according to the New York Post.
“She bit him, and that is why he stabbed her,” a source said of the working theory.
Another one of the young suspects told authorities that the 14-year-old had his finger bitten by Majors during the attack. Investigators hope that they will be able to recover blood from the 14-year-old from Majors’s body and run DNA tests to determine if he was culpable.
The suspected attacker remains free from charges pending the DNA test. He had been on the run for more than two weeks after he leaped from a car, prompting a lengthy manhunt, though police now think that might have been staged in order to give the child time to escape. He was caught on Thursday.
When the 14-year-old was brought in, he refused to answer any questions on the advice of his attorney.
One of the other suspects, Zyairr Davis, 13, was arrested soon after the death and charged with felony murder. Davis allegedly admitted to assisting with the robbery but denied that he stabbed her, pointing the finger at the 14-year-old.
Majors, who was an aspiring artist and musician, was found by a security guard in Morningside Park in Manhattan last week with stab wounds on multiple parts of her body. The park is near Barnard College, a small institution of about 2,300 undergraduates.
