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A teenager who served little time in juvenile detention for his role in the death of a Barnard College freshman is now behind bars on Rikers Island after shooting at a crowd and biting the arm of a counselor while imprisoned.
Zyairr Davis was only 13 when Tessa Majors was killed as she tried to stop him and two others from stealing her phone in Morningside Park in New York City on December 11, 2019.
Davis pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery after admitting to handing Rashuan Weaver the blade that was used to stab the 18-year-old in the heart after the killer dropped it.
He sentenced to just 18 months in juvenile detention in June of 2020 due to the Raise the Age law, which raised the age of criminal responsibility to 18 in most cases to keep kids out of jail.
Davis was released but soon found himself in trouble again.
He was charged with attempted murder and placed in Horizon Juvenile Detention Center after he and two others had allegedly fired shots at a crowd in Harlem in April of 2023, according to the New York Post.
Davis, who was 16 at the time, fired shots in retaliation for the death of his friend Jaylen Duncan, who was killed an hour earlier by Messiah Nantwi, a member of the local gang, according to a Manhattan criminal complaint cited by the source.
Davis was at the scene of Duncan's murder and then headed toward the Lincoln Houses, a public housing complex, with the other two accomplices to grab a gun.
They returned to the area, which was only two blocks away from the original murder scene, and fired at a crowd standing on the corner, according to police.
![Rashuan Weaver [pictured] one of the three stabbed the freshman girl and was sentenced to 14 years to life](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/10/27/08/103332251-15228475-Rashuan_Weaver_pictured_one_of_the_three_stabbed_the_freshman_gi-a-68_1761552344226.jpg)
Davis was detained in the South Bronx and was arrested again while in detention center for an altercation with other detainees on September 17, 2023, in which, during the fight, he attacked a youth counselor, according to a Bronx Criminal Court complaint found by the outlet.
A video allegedly showed Davis biting the member with the Administration for Children’s Services on his right arm.
The ACS moved him to Rikers Island, according to the repeat offender's lawyer, Neville Mitchell.
The island prison is a facility for only those charged as adults.
His co-accused in Majors' death, Luciano Lewis and Weaver, were both charged as adults. The two were both given possible life sentences, with Weaver facing a minimum of 14 years and Lewis facing at least nine years.
Lewis had Majors in a headlock as Weaver knifed the girl multiple times. Majors struggled up the outdoor steps to a nearby street where she was spotted by a campus security guard who called 911.
She died from her injuries in hospital.
Mitchell, who is also an Independent Democratic write-in candidate for mayor, told The Post about her client: 'I don’t know that he got the help needed when he was there for 18 months.
'I’m not sure to what extent they can change what’s happened to this young man in the first 13 years of life. And then he comes out, and he goes right back into the community around the same sort of influences.'
On the other hand, retired NYPD Assistant Commissioner of Youth Services Kevin O’Connor said to the publication that the Raise the Age law was at fault.
The retired Assistant Commissioner added that the government is supposed to step in and provide justice despite a criminal's upbringing.