New York City police have arrested a teenager in connection to the killing of O’Shae Sibley, a well-known gay dancer and choreographer who was stabbed after he and his friends vogued to music by Beyoncé at a Brooklyn gas station on 29 July.
CBS News reported on Saturday that the suspect is 17 years old and faces charges of murder as a hate crime as well as criminal possession of a weapon. He was reportedly booked as an adult, though his identity wasn’t released because he is younger than 18.
The news came a day after city councilwoman Inna Vernikov, whose district covers the Midwood neighborhood where the stabbing took place, confirmed the suspect had “turned himself” over to police and wished Sibley’s family “peace during this difficult time”.
Vernikov also said she hoped “for swift justice and serious consequences for the perpetrator”.
New York police announced days earlier that they were investigating Sibley’s killing as a hate crime. His death marked the latest in a “rise of violence and harassment” against LGBTQ+ people, the advocacy group Glaad said in a statement to the Advocate magazine. Glaad, along with the Anti-Defamation League, released a report in June highlighting more than 350 cases of attacks and harassment against gay and transgender people in the US between June 2022 and April 2023.
Sibley, 28, had been returning from a birthday party with friends when he filled up his car with gasoline and blasted Beyoncé music in Brooklyn on 29 July.
He and his friends were dancing shirtless on a sweltering summer night and voguing – a form of dance popularized in the ballroom scene by queer Black and Latino people – when a group confronted Sibley’s group and told them to stop dancing.
Witnesses say the group reportedly hurled homophobic slurs and said that they did not want to see gay men dancing in their neighborhood. According to the New York Daily News, there were also anti-Black insults hurled, police said.
Summy Ullah, an employee at the gas station who witnessed the altercation, told the New York Times that he recalled one of the young men saying: “I’m Muslim. I don’t want this here.”
Surveillance footage showed two groups exchanging words. As the confrontation escalated, police say a young man in a black shirt and red shorts pulled out a knife and stabbed Sibley in the torso. Sibley later died at the hospital.
“They murdered him because he’s gay, because he stood up for his friends,” Otis Pena, one of Sibley’s friends who witnessed the attack, said on Facebook hours after the slaying.
Sibley was described as a peacemaker and as a shy person who had found his exuberance. He had grown up in Philadelphia and formed part of Philadanco, a prominent dance company, as a teenager into his 20s, before moving to New York during the coronavirus pandemic with aspirations of dancing professionally, as had been his lifelong dream.
Sibley danced with the extension program at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and had been preparing to audition for The Lion King.
Hundreds gathered and danced at a memorial outside the gas station in Brooklyn on Friday while many others – from Philadanco’s founder to Beyoncé – have issued tributes honoring Sibley’s life. Sibley’s funeral is scheduled for Tuesday at the Metropolitan Opera House in Philadelphia.
