By Tim Reid

(Reuters) – The 2019 murder of Tessa Majors, an 18-year old college student from New York was committed by a teenage boy. He received a sentence of nine years and a half to life imprisonment.

Luchiano Lewis (aged 16) has pleaded guilty, in an agreement with the prosecutors, to second degree murder and first-degree theft.

Lewis, then 14 years old, admitted to investigators that he was with two other friends who had been going to Harlem’s Morningside Park, December 2019, in the hope of robberizing someone. The college-freshman Majors attacked Lewis, stabbing her to death in an attempted robbery.

Manhattan’s district attorney charged Lewis with murder along with Rashaun Weaver (a 16-year-old friend) Weaver pleaded not guilty to the murder and will be facing a separate trial.

Third member of the group, who was just 13 at the time the attack occurred, has since confessed. He’s currently being held for 18 months at a juvenile correctional center.

A statement by Majors’ family was read out loud during Thursday’s sentencing hearing.

Tess, our little girl and her hopes were tragically crushed by tragedy on Dec. 11, 2019. “Nearly two years after her murder, our family still finds it difficult to express the immense pain, trauma, and suffering we have endured,” said the family statement.

The statement said that Tess’s friends returned to school and performed in concert, and they are experiencing all of the things she will never experience.

Majors attended Barnard College in Manhattan.

Robert Mandelbaum was the judge and stated before Lewis’ sentencing that Lewis had repeatedly been violent in his detention.

The judge stated that the defendant had proven in the year and half following this horrible incident that it was no accident.