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One of the New York City teens involved in the 2019 stabbing death of 18-year-old Virginian Tessa Majors, a Barnard College freshman, is back behind bars on charges of attempted murder and assault after a slap-on-the-wrist juvenile sentence, according to local reporting.
Zyairr Davis, then 13, was one of three teens arrested in the attack, but not the one who delivered the fatal blow. As a result, he received the lightest sentence — 18 months in juvenile detention, while the others saw life sentences.
Now he's back behind bars on charges that include attempted murder in connection with a gang-related shooting into a crowd of people in Harlem, the New York Post reported Sunday. Court records show he faces nearly a dozen new charges in adult court, nearly all of them violent.
Majors, originally from Charlottesville, was attending her first semester at the school, which is affiliated with and across the street from the Ivy League's Columbia University.
Zyairr Davis, now an adult, in his most recent booking photo, following an arrest on 11 charges stemming from a Harlem shooting. When he was 13, he was involved in the knifepoint robbery that led to the death of 18-year-old Barnard College student Tessa Majors, who was from Charlottesville, Virginia, and killed her during her first semester in New York City. (Courtesy of the New York Post)
Davis and two 14-year-old pals, Rashaun Weaver and Luchiano Lewis, attacked her from behind in Morningside Park, a block away from campus, around 7 p.m. on Dec. 11, 2019, according to court documents.
They swiped her phone, but she fought back, biting Weaver hard enough that he dropped a knife, which Davis picked up and handed back to him, according to prosecutors.
According to a victims' impact statement her family read at Weaver's sentencing, she fought her way free twice, but the boys continued to surround and attack her.
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A makeshift memorial stands for 18-year-old Barnard College freshman Tessa Majors in Morningside Park on December 26, 2019, in New York City. Three young teenagers were convicted of killing her in a knifepoint robbery. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)
Ultimately, Lewis held her in a headlock as Weaver stabbed her to death, so hard that Davis told police he saw down feathers exploding out of her jacket, Fox News Digital reported previously. She suffered repeated stab wounds, including one through the heart.
Police recovered Weaver's DNA under her nails. Her father said at trial that she fiercely tried to keep her phone because she was an aspiring musician with years worth of songs on the device.
The two 14-year-olds were charged as adults, but the case against Davis remained in juvenile court, which slapped him with an 18-month sentence for robbery.
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Tessa Majors smiling in this undated photograph provided by her family. The Virginia native was 18 years old attending Barnard College in New York City when she was stabbed and killed during a knifepoint robbery in Manhattan's Morningside Park. (Courtesy of the Majors family)
Weaver pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in December 2021 in exchange for a sentence of 14 years to life in prison. He also pleaded guilty to two more unrelated robberies. Lewis pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and first-degree robbery and received a sentence of nine years to life in prison.
By April of this year, according to the Post report, he was back on the streets and allegedly involved in a gang-related Harlem shooting into a crowd.
While jailed on an attempted murder charge in a juvenile facility, he allegedly brawled with other inmates, according to court documents, and was accused of attacking a youth counselor, racking up new charges of assault and harassment.
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"They always go back to ‘He was a poor kid who had a bad childhood,'" Kevin O'Connor, a former New York City youth services official, told the Post. "That’s not the victim’s problem. That’s where government is supposed to step in and do its job."
He blamed New York's "Raise the Age" law, which put more cases against teens under 18 in family court rather than criminal court, for allowing Davis back on the streets.
Davis, who was born in 2006, is finally charged as an adult, court records show.
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He pleaded not guilty to 11 charges in connection with the Harlem shooting.
He is expected to make his first appearance in the jail brawl case on Nov. 12 and is due back in court in connection with the shooting on Dec. 4.
