Suspect arrested in connection to fatal stabbing of gay man who was dancing to Beyoncé

The New York Police Department announced that a 17-year-old suspect has been charged with murder as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon in connection to the stabbing death of O’Shea Sibley.

According to witnesses and security camera footage, 28-year-old professional dancer and gay man O’Shea Sibley was voguing to a song from Beyoncé’s Rennaissance album in pink shorts at a gas station in Brooklyn on July 29 when a group of young men told him to stop. One witness said that the young men cited their Muslim faith as a reason that Sibley had to stop dancing.

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The young men, who witnesses said made anti-LGBTQ+ comments, got into a fight with Sibley and his friends, and that’s when the 17-year-old suspect is believed to have stabbed Sibley in the torso. Sibley later died at Maimonides Medical Center.

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Assistant Chief of the NYPD detective bureau Joseph Kenny said that the 17-year-old is the only person who will be charged in connection to the killing. Since it has not been determined whether the suspect, who attends a local high school, will be tried as an adult, his name has not yet been made public.

The suspect faces the hate crimes charge “based on the statements from the group in general,” Kenny said at a press conference on Saturday, the day after the suspect surrendered to police. “You have a lot of anti-gay statements and a lot of derogatory statements being made – anti-Black – from the group and from the defendant himself.”

“This is a city where you are free to express yourself, and that expression should never end with any form of violence,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said at the press conference, adding that the killing was “something that was clearly a hate crime.”