A first-year student at Barnard College was killed in an upper Manhattan park near the school early Wednesday evening. Police say the young woman was slain during a mugging. Update: NYPD officials said on Thursday that they were questioning individuals about the killing. [See more below]

Police say that just after 5:30 p.m. officers responded to a 911 call for a "female assaulted in the vicinity of West 116th Street and Morningside Drive" and found Tessa Majors, 18, unconscious with multiple stab wounds. Majors was taken to Mount Sinai-St. Luke's Hospital where she was pronounced deceased.

While the police have not released details about the circumstances of the killing, in a letter to the Barnard community, the school's president Sian Leah Beilock said that Majors was "fatally injured during an armed robbery that occurred off campus in Morningside Park."

Majors was reportedly approached by a group who demanded her property. Then she was attacked; according to WABC 7, "Preliminary information suggested that Majors was stabbed several times in the face, neck and under her arm."

She apparently managed to climb up the stairs to exit the park, where Columbia University says a public safety officer at 116th Street and Morningside Drive at his post saw her and 'came to her aid immediately upon recognizing that she was injured."

Morningside Park, which is between 110th and 123rd Streets and Morningside Avenue and Morningside Drive, sits on a "steep incline," with long staircases. For decades, the park had a "dangerous reputation," but many years of community efforts and support from the city have helped turn the park around.

Still, Columbia University has had an uneasy relationship with the park and surrounding community, sparking widespread condemnation when the university attempted to build a gym in the park. The gym proposal led to the famous 1968 student uprising, which saw 1,000 students occupying Columbia buildings to protest the plans; the plan was eventually abandoned.

After news of Majors's death, the NY Times spoke to students around the Barnard and Columbia campuses: "[Isabel] Johnson, a Columbia student, said she had participated in an effort to help clean up the park and improve its reputation as dangerous. She said Ms. Majors’s murder would affect students’ perception of the park. 'This is going to re-demonize the image.'"

In her letter to the Barnard community, Beilock said that Majors's family was traveling from Virginia to New York:

Dean Grinage and I have spoken to her parents and Tessa's family is enroute to NYC. We are also in close touch with the New York Police Department as they conduct this on-going investigation and seek to identify the assailant in this horrible attack. Tessa was just beginning her journey at Barnard and in life. We mourn this devastating murder of an extraordinary young woman and member of our community. This is an unthinkable tragedy that has shaken us to our core. Please know that we are all grieving together and I am thinking of you as we process this awful news as a community.

Majors's grandmother, Martha Burton, told the Daily News, "I guess being from a smaller town she was too naive to think about walking alone in New York City. She just shouldn’t have been there." Her grandfather described her as "a lovely, lovely girl, very very smart and sweet."

Update: During an unrelated press conference, NYPD Chief of Detective Rodney Harrison called the murder a "despicable crime." He said that based on their preliminary investigation, police believe that Majors was engaged by an unknown number of people—"one to three"—and during a struggle, one p[before getting into a struggle with them. At one point, one of the people allegedly took out a knife and stabbed her

"She was able to stagger her way to the surface side of Morningside," Harrison said, before being seen by the public safety officer. He also confirmed that investigators were speaking to two minors, who were with their guardians, about the crime.

When asked about rising crime in Morningside Park, both Harrison and NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said that they had strategies in place to address issues, pointing out how they had arrested individuals, ages 14 to 16, involved in one robbery pattern. "Yes there has been an increase" in crime, he said. "There's been increased patrols in the area. I wish it had prevented this one."

"The idea that a college freshman at Barnard was murdered in cold blood—it's not only painful to me as a parent, it’s terrifying to think that could happen anywhere," Mayor Bill de Blasio said. "It's an unacceptable reality... It's horrifying."

Shea noted that they were increasing police presence around Morningside Park as well as Barnard and Columbia. "We will do everything we can to keep students safe," he promised.

This story has been updated to reflect that the Columbia University public safety officer was at his post when Majors emerged at Morningside Drive, not away from his post as previously noted in a now-deleted Tweet.