Fatal Stabbing of a Barnard Student

18-year-old Freshman at Barnard, Tessa Rane Majors was walking through Morningside Park Wednesday evening, when she was stabbed to death. Majors was only a few blocks away from her college campus. After the attack, she stumbled up a flight of stairs to street level before collapsing at the park security booth. She was found unconscious with "multiple stab wounds about the body". “The passing of Tess Majors is an unthinkable tragedy that has shaken us to our core,” Barnard College President Sian Leah Beilock said during a community gathering Thursday. “We are all grieving, and trying to grasp the senseless tragedy that took Tess from us.”

The police arrested a 13-year-old boy as the murderer. The boy was observed by police Thursday in the lobby of a building near the Manhattan neighborhood where the stabbing occurred one day earlier. He was wearing clothes matching the description given for the suspect in the Barnard student's killing. The police arrested him and recommend charges of second-degree murder, first-degree robbery and criminal possession of a weapon against the boy. The suspect is only 13-years-old so it brings up the question of whether he should be tried as an adult or a minor.

In global, we have watched the boys in Central Park 5 and the documentary on Lionel Tate. In the Central Park 5 series, a similar event unfolded, where young boys were accused of violent crimes in a city park. After watching that documentary and now looking at what is happening in the news with the Barnard student stabbing, it makes me wonder if it is possible for someone as young as the 13-year-old to commit an act so horrible. Could the police be pointing the blame on an innocent teen, based on racial targetting, once again? I really doubt they are but after the Central Park 5 movie, it makes me wonder. In the Lionel Tate documentary, it was debated whether Tate should be tried as an adult or a minor. Tate and the suspect in this murder were both only 13-years-old. Does their young age give them any protection? In my opinion, when people commit something so horribly wrong, such as Tate or as this boy, their age doesn't matter. And I believe at the age of 13 you should be somewhat responsible for your actions, especially those that are this severe.