Photo: Tess Majors/Instagram
Chris Graham knewTessa Majorswas a standout the minute he met her for coffee last December to discuss her upcoming internship.
“I’m used to these meetings lasting 15 or 20 minutes,” Graham, the editor of theAugusta Free Press,tells PEOPLE.
“But we were sitting there talking for 2½ hours. She had many questions for me. I knew right away she would do well.”
“I told her she was a natural journalist,” Graham tells PEOPLE.
Tessa Majors.Tessa Majors/Instagram
Most of all, he noticed how she wanted to help others using the platform the Waynesboro, Virginia-basedAugusta Free Pressallowed her.
“She worked on a story about a young person who was working on an app that was going to help people with disabilities,” he says. “She wanted to do that. She wanted to raise attention about that. She was such a selfless young woman.”
For more on the life and tragic death of Tessa Majors, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.
All that promise came to a shocking end on the evening of Dec. 11, when Majors was stabbed to death in New York City’s Morningside Park near her dorm at Barnard College, where she was a freshman.
The 18-year-oldtried to fight off the group of teenswho allegedly attacked her during the apparent robbery,biting one in the finger,multiple outlets including CNN,The New York Timesand NBC New York report.
While one of the teens held her in a chokehold,another allegedly slashed her with a knife in the face, hands and arms, stabbing her so hard that feathers came out of her jacket, TIME,The New York Timesand NBC New York report.
One of the teens allegedly went through her pockets, taking her wallet.
Then the three boys went home.
Bleeding from her wounds, Majors managed to stagger up the massive staircase on the park’s west side to the top of the stairs, where she collapsed.
Views of the crime scene in Morningside Park.Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty
She was rushed to Mount Sinai St. Luke’s Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
“It’s still hard to process, honestly,” says Graham.
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One of the teens — a 13-year-old who is now charged with second-degree murder, first and second-degree robbery and criminal possession of a weapon — gave his account of the alleged stabbing on Friday when he testified in family court.
The middle-schooler remains held without bail in a juvenile facility.
On Tuesday, the court found probable cause for the charges of Felony Murder and Robbery in the First Degree. His next court date is Dec. 23.
Police are still searching for a 14-year-old who fled from a car as he was coming in for police questioning Monday night, NYPD sources tell PEOPLE. They are also seeking a third suspect.
In the meantime, those who knew Majors well, like Graham, mourn the loss of the intelligent, spirited, talented musician and bass player who had the whole world before her.
Tessa Majors, playing in her band, Patient 0.Tess Majors/Instagram
“It’s not fair that her life was snuffed out so senselessly,” he says. “The tragedy beyond comprehension is that we will never know what she would have gone on to do.
“She was going to succeed in something — whatever that something was going to be.”
“She was going to make the world a better place.”
Pausing, he adds: “She already was making the world a better place.”
source: people.com
