Teen who was convicted in a college student’s death has been sentenced to a maximum of nine years to life in jail.
Luchiano Lewis, now 16, was one of three teens that were charged in the 2019 murder that shocked New York City.
On Thursday, Lewis was sentenced in Manhattan criminal court after pleading guilty last month to robbery and murder.
Lewis was only 14 years old at the time of the crime, and prosecutors at the Manhattan district attorney’s office decided that he would be charged as an adult.
The devastated family of Tessa Majors, 18, has described their ‘immeasurable pain’ in court.
Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos read a statement on behalf of Inman Majors, Tessa’s father.
“On December 11, 2019, the hopes and dreams for our daughter Tess came to a tragic end,” Bogdanos said. “Nearly two years later, we still find words inadequate to describe the immeasurable pain, trauma, and suffering that our family has endured since her senseless murder.”
“Tess was a brilliant student, a voracious reader, a poet, and a fledgling journalist,” he added. “She had big dreams.”
Tessa was from Charlottesville, Virginia. She was finishing her first semester at Barnard College in Manhattan when she walked through the Morningside Park before 8 pm that night.
According to ABC 7, as Tessa approached the stairs to exit at West 116th Street, a group of teens including Lewis, Rashan Weaver, 16, and an unnamed 13-year-old boy, tried to rob her and take her phone.
The police and prosecutors said that Weaver was the one with the knife, but Lewis was equally to blame.
Last month, Weaver pleaded not guilty, and his trial date is expected to be set next week.
“Lewis may not have used the knife, but was not just along for the ride”, prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos said. “He’s alive, and, because of him, she is not.”
In Tessa’s final moments of life, a security camera caught her struggling to walk up a flight of stairs dripping in blood.
When Tessa finally reached the street she collapsed against a lamppost and died minutes later.
The footage of her death was played in the courtroom, along with a statement from Tessa’s parents Inman and Christy Majors.
Judge Robert Mandelbaum handed Lewis’ sentence and said that her murder ‘tore at the fabric of the entire city’.
“The defendant was and is extremely young. He has his whole life ahead of him but Tessa Majors does not,” Judge Mandelbaum said.
Meanwhile, Lewis told the court that he felt embarrassed, ashamed, and ‘sad in the role I played destroying two families’.
Lewis apologized to both Tessa’s parents and his own father, adding that he failed him and ‘became less human’.
Despite Lewis’ apology, Judge Mandelbaum was still skeptical, saying ‘sadly and troublingly, the defendant has learned no lessons’.
The judge said that Lewis has been involved in numerous ‘violent acts’ while incarcerated. One of these was when he had beaten another inmate with a piece of metal wrapped in a sock.
Lewis was also sentenced to 40 months to 12 years on the robbery count.
At the time of this writing, it is unclear if the sentences will be served concurrently or consecutively, Mail Online reported.
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