A 17-year-old was indicted Thursday on a cost of homicide as a hate crime within the stabbing loss of life of O’Shae Sibley, an expert dancer who was attacked at a Brooklyn, New York, fuel station final month.
Brooklyn District Lawyer Eric Gonzalez stated a grand jury returned the indictment after prosecutors introduced proof the killing was motivated by anti-Black and homophobic bias.
Sibley, 28, was heading house with associates on July 29 once they stopped for fuel. They joyously started vogueing to Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” album earlier than they have been confronted by one other group yelling slurs and demanding they cease dancing.
Safety footage reveals Sibley confronting one of many aggressors earlier than he was stabbed. He was pronounced lifeless at a close-by hospital.
Gonzalez known as the loss of life “tragic and senseless” and vowed that his workplace would see justice.
“O’Shae and his friends were allegedly targeted, because they were dancing, they were being themselves, dancing joyfully to Beyoncé music at a Brooklyn gas station, harming no one,” Gonzalez stated throughout a media briefing. He added Sibley refused “to stop even when confronted with anti-Black and homophobic slurs demanding that they stop dancing.”
The accused killer has not been named due to his age. A cost of second-degree homicide as a hate crime carries a minimal sentence of 20 years in jail and a most sentence of 25 years to life.
Sibley’s loss of life prompted outrage across the nation amid a surge in violence towards LGBTQ Individuals. A latest report by the Anti-Defamation League and the GLAAD advocacy group discovered a whole bunch of situations of assault, violence or harassment in opposition to queer individuals in latest months. The statistics got here as Republicans across the nation moved to cross a whole bunch of transphobic and anti-LGBTQ payments.
Beyoncé posted a tribute to Sibley on her web site.
Sibley, who labored as an expert dancer and choreographer, moved to New York shortly earlier than the pandemic and was well-known within the metropolis’s ballroom group. His father described him as a “ball of light” throughout a memorial service.
The DA linked the slaying with the wave of anti-queer laws and rising “rhetoric of hate,” and stated the assault reverberated far past Brooklyn.
“The entire community has been victimized by this senseless victimization of Mr. Sibley,” Gonzalez stated. “This crime, while clearly impacting his family and loved ones, has impacted the entirety of Brooklyn, and the entirety of the city and I dare say the entire nation.”
“The allegations made against this 17-year-old are of tremendous import to this city and to this country, and I’m assuring the community that we are taking this case very seriously and we’re going to make sure that justice prevails in this case,” he added.
