TESSA ‘CONFESS’
Teen ‘killer’ on wiretap with jailed father
The 15-year-old charged with fatally stabbing Barnard student Tessa Majors during a park mugging was caught on a wiretap confessing to his jailed dad, sources told The Post Tuesday — as it emerged that the youngster has been indicted in yet another vicious robbery.
Before he was arrested in the Dec. 11, 2019, slaying, Rashaun Weaver allegedly spilled his guts to his father, Clifford Weaver, in a conversation picked up on a recorded prison phone line at the Mohawk Correctional Facility, in upstate Rome, NY, where the elder Weaver was being held on a parole violation.
“The defendant stated in substance that he was in the park and tried to take the girl’s phone and ‘she was hanging onto her phone’ and that he hit her with a knife,” said court papers, describing the conversation.
A grand jury has indicted the younger Weaver and his pal, Keith Bond, 14, for a Valentine’s Day robbery committed hours before Weaver was arrested for Majors’ murder.
At about 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 14, 2020, Weaver, Bond and two others allegedly beat and robbed a man in East Harlem, according to a complaint.
The unnamed victim showed up outside 65 E. 112th St. purportedly to buy a cellphone from Bond. Instead, he was ambushed.
Weaver, his face obscured by a black ski mask, approached the victim and allegedly asked him if he had any weed. Then Weaver and Bond — joined by two unidentified suspects — chased after the man and pummeled him in the head and face before stealing his cellphone, $130 and his shoes, the complaint states.
The victim suffered two black eyes and bruising to the nose and cheeks, court papers state.
Hours after the brazen robbery, Weaver was taken into custody at his home in East Harlem and charged with Majors’ murder.
He already knew he was a suspect in the slaying of the college freshman from Charlottesville, Va. Six weeks earlier, authorities had questioned him about the case but released him without charges.
Prosecutors allege that Weaver and co-defendant Luchiano Lewis, who were 14 at the time, and Zyairr Davis, then 13, tried to mug Majors in Morningside Park.
After she yelled for help, Lewis allegedly held Majors, 18, in a headlock while Weaver repeatedly stabbed her in the torso, sending the feathers of her down jacket flying.
In a videotaped confession, Davis told authorities the trio had gone to the park that night looking to rob someone.
Davis, who was tried as a juvenile, copped to one count of first-degree robbery in June and was sentenced to 18 months in detention.
Weaver and Lewis, who are being tried as adults, also face charges for the alleged knifepoint robbery of a stranger’s cellphone in Morningside Park just four days before Majors’ murder, according to court papers.