College Freshman From VA Killed In NYC: Teen Reportedly Arrested

MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, NY — A 13-year-old boy has been arrested in the fatal stabbing of a freshman at Barnard College who is from Charlottesville, Virginia. Tessa Majors was reportedly killed during an attempted robbery.

Majors was walking through Morningside Park, blocks away from the Barnard and Columbia University campuses in Manhattan, Wednesday night when she was stabbed multiple times, NYPD Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison said.

The 18-year-old woman was able to stagger to a nearby Columbia security post, where the guard on duty rushed to her aid and called police, Harrison said.

Barnard President Sian Leah Beilock described the killing as an "unthinkable tragedy that has shaken us to our core," and added that the school reached out to Majors' family. Her parents were making the trip from Charlottesville, Virginia, to New York City after speaking with Barnard officials, the school announced.

Related: Virginia Freshman Stabbed To Death In NYC By Muggers: Report

Majors' family released a statement Thursday through the publisher for her father, a novelist and professor at James Madison University, Inman Majors.

"We lost a very special, very talented, and very well-loved young woman," said the statement, published by the New York Post. "Tess shone bright in this world, and our hearts will never be the same."

Police had said two juveniles were being questioned Thursday in the 26th Precinct in connection with the homicide.

A teenager was reportedly arrested after police said he was trespassing in a building near the Morningside Heights park. He confessed to participating in the stabbing, CBS2 New York reported.

A New York Police Department spokesman could not confirm details Friday morning and said the investigation is still open and active.

Up to three suspects were being sought in connection with the killing, ABC7 reported.

Majors was a green-haired musician whose band released an album entitled "Girl Problems" in September, according to the New York Times, which reported she had interned at the Augusta Free Press in Waynesboro, Virginia. The editor of the paper described her as "more worldly than most people 17 or 18 years old coming from here."

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio condemned the attack, pledging to find those responsible.

"The idea that a college freshman at Barnard was murdered in cold blood is absolutely not only painful to me as a parent," de Blasio said, "it's terrifying to think that that could happen anywhere."

— By Brendan Krisel and Elizabeth Janney