Ed Mullins, who heads the Sergeants Benevolent Association in New York, says Tessa Majors went to Morningside Park to cop weed before she was stabbed to death there on December 11.
“What I am understanding is that [she] was in the park to buy marijuana,” Mullins told a New York radio station.
He claims that a friend of Majors told detectives that was what she was doing in the park at about 5 pm. where she was stabbed and killed. Police have arrested a 13-year-old boy so far who admitted to robbing her, but not killing her. He says another boy did that.
Had Tessa Majors been able to go to a legal store to make her pot purchase instead of a park after dark, she would be alive today.
“We have a common denominator: marijuana,” Mullins added. “If you think about that, we don’t enforce marijuana laws anymore. We are basically hands-off on the enforcement of marijuana.”
While Mullins wants to blame the death on reduced policing around marijuana in the city, the fact is had Majors been able to go to a legal store to make her pot purchase instead of a park after dark, she would be alive today.
Majors' family called Mullins' remarks "deeply inappropriate, as they intentionally or unintentionally direct blame onto Tess, a young woman, for her own murder. We would ask Mr. Mullins not to engage in such irresponsible public speculation, just as the NYPD asked our family not to comment as it conducts the investigation."
Marijuana is decrimimnalized in New York. Possession of two ounces is not a crime, but it remains illegal to sell the product. Medical patients can go to dispensaries in the city and around the state to purchase cannabis.
A freshman, Majors was 18 and hailed from Charlottesville, VA. Barnard College (for girls) and Columbia University (co-ed) share a campus at 116 St. and Broadway. Morningside Park is east of the campus from 110 St. to 123 St.
This article was originally posted on December 15 and updated on December 16.
