Suspect released in killing of student
NEW YORK – A 14-year-old boy suspected of fatally stabbing a Barnard College freshman was released from police custody on Thursday, hours after New York City police said he had been located following a two-week manhunt.
Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison tweeted that finding the suspect “was a significant development in the investigative process,” but that the youth had since been released to the custody of his lawyers. Harrison didn’t say why the boy was released.
A police spokesman declined to provide details, saying “the investigation remains active and ongoing.”
A spokesman for Neighborhood Defender Service confirmed that the organization is providing the boy with legal representation.
The 14-year-old was one of three youths police believe were involved in the stabbing of 18-year-old Tessa Majors as she walked through Manhattan’s Morningside Park on Dec. 11. Police
tracked him down after taking the unusual step last Friday of releasing photographs of him but not his name or any other identifying information.
Of the two other suspects, only one has been charged.
A 13-year-old boy arrested Dec. 13 and charged as a juvenile with felony murder told detectives he was at the park with the others but wasn’t the one who stabbed Majors, police said.
Another juvenile suspect was questioned for several hours, also on Dec. 13, but police let him go, Harrison said. He has declined to say why that boy wasn’t charged.
Majors was stabbed while walking in the park just before 7 p.m., two days before the start of final exams at Barnard, an all-women’s school that is part of the Ivy League’s Columbia University.
Some city leaders have urged police to use caution in investigating Majors’ death to avoid repeating mistakes made with the Central Park Five – a group of five black and Hispanic teens wrongfully convicted of a 1989 rape.