NEW YORK — Police have arrested a 17-year-old high school student on a hate-motivated murder charge in the fatal stabbing of a professional dancer during an altercation between two groups of friends at a New York City gas station last weekend.
Police took the teenager into custody Friday in connection with the killing of the 28-year-old O’Shae Sibley, who was gay. Authorities declined to release the defendant’s name.
“Parents lost a child, a child, to something that was a hate crime,” Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain, said Saturday during a news conference outside the Brooklyn gas station where Sibley was killed July 29.
People gather at a gas station during a vigil to memorialize O’Shae Sibley on Friday, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Sibley, a gay man, was fatally stabbed at the gas station after a confrontation between a group of friends dancing to a Beyoncé song and several young men who taunted them. Tracie Van Auken/Associated Press
The stabbing occurred after the two groups got into a confrontation at one of the gas pumps, where Sibley was dancing with his friends to a Beyoncé song. Authorities said Sibley’s group was taunted by the other group before the confrontation ended in violence.
Beyoncé would later pay tribute to Sibley on her website.
Security camera video showed the two groups arguing for a few minutes. Both sides had walked away when Sibley and a friend abruptly returned and again confronted one of the young men, who had stayed behind recording on his phone.
In the video, Sibley could be seen following the teen and lunging at him before the two disappeared from the camera’s view. A moment later, he walks backward into view, checking his side, and then collapses to the sidewalk.
Lee Soulja Simmons, the executive director of the NYC Center for Black Pride, also spoke at the news conference.
“We wrestle with people within our community constantly facing discrimination – not just because you’re Black but because you represent LGBT” communities, he said.
“The fact that he was doing nothing more but voguing and dancing here, he did not deserve to die in that way,” Simmons said.
One of Sibley’s friends who was there, Otis Pena, said in a Facebook video that Sibley was killed because he was gay, and “because he stood up for his friends.”
One witness, Summy Ullah, said in interviews that the men complained that their behavior offended them as Muslims.
Some leaders of the area’s Muslim community condemned the slaying.
“The weight of this loss is felt deeply, not just by the family and friends of O’Shae, but by all of us who value life, peace, and justice,” Soniya Ali, the executive director of the Muslim Community Center, said Saturday.
“As Muslims, we are committed to stand up for justice, even if it means standing against our own selves,” she said. “We unequivocally condemn the unjust murder of O’Shae.”
Sibley performed with the dance company Philadanco in his native Philadelphia and New York, where he took classes with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Ailey Extension program.
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