New York police are investigating as a homophobic hate crime the stabbing death of O’Shae Sibley, a 28-year-old professional dancer, who was killed Saturday night while he was with a group of friends dancing to Beyoncé.
The man bled to death after being stabbed by a group of men who said they were “offended” by his dance, according to several witnesses.
Summy Ullah, an employee at the establishment, told the Gothamist site that Sibley and his friends were confronted by the other men who argued that the behavior of the dancer and his escorts “offended their faith.”
Ullah said the people who confronted Sibley’s group were friends of a man who works at a nearby convenience store and who frequently go to the gas station where the dancer died to use the bathroom.
“Gay people didn’t want to fight,” Ullah said. “It was the one from the store and his friends who started this.”
What happened to O’Shae Sibley?
After spending a day at the beach, Sibley and a group of friends stopped at a Brooklyn gas station while listening to Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” album.
It was then that the professional dancer began to do “vogueing”, a style of dance that began in the eighties as an imitation of the poses of models and has now become not only a dance, but also an expression of art. and protest.
According to witnesses, the group of men approached Sibley and his friends and told them to stop dancing, since it offended their beliefs. First they did it with insults. Then with blows. Finally stabbed.
Everything was recorded on the store’s security cameras, according to Gothamist. Sibley defends his friends as the group of men attack them. For a moment, the chaos of the physical fight makes him disappear from the frame. When he reappears, the dancer had been stabbed.
Otis Pena, one of Sibley’s best friends, tried to stop the bleeding before taking him to the hospital, but to no avail. The dancer bled to death and was pronounced dead on arrival at Maimonides Medical Center, according to The New York Times.
What have been the reactions to Sibley’s death?
Pena, Sibley’s friend who tried to keep him alive as the dancer lay dying, uploaded a video to Facebook just hours after his death.
“They killed him because he was gay, because he defended his friends. His name was O’Shae and you killed him. You killed him in front of me,” says Pena, addressing the alleged murderers.
Security camera footage, reported by Gothamist, shows Sibley and Pena addressing the group of men attacking them. One of them tells them: “There’s nothing wrong with being gay.”
The crime has devastated Sibley’s family, according to The New York Times. He was one of 11 siblings.
Sibley had moved from Philadelphia before the pandemic, hoping New York would bring her more auditions and opportunities, one of her aunts, Tondra Sibley, explained to The New York Times. “It is a senseless crime. O’Shae was always peaceful. All he wanted to do was dance.”
A neighbor, Beckenbauer Hamilton, 51, said he had warned Sibley not to be “so open” about his sexuality. Hamilton, who is also gay, reminded him that in his youth he had suffered insults and attacks.
“O’Shae wasn’t afraid to be who she was,” Hamilton said. “He would have defended his friends.”
An increase in attacks against the LGBTQ community
According to the report, in the first three weeks of June there were 101 incidents of this type, more than double those registered during the same period in the previous year.
The Human Rights Campaign group declared an unusual “state of emergency” in June of this year due to the increase in attacks against the LGBTQ community.
In the statement, the first issued by this group in its 43-year existence, it warns of a “dangerous and unprecedented” increase in attacks against LGBTQ people.
“We are in a crisis of an even larger scale for the health and well-being of the LGBTQ community, and we need a response of that scale,” the group’s president, Kelley Robinson, told the AP agency at the time.
What have the authorities said about the death of O’Shea Sibley?
New York police had not made any arrests as of Monday, but said Tuesday they have assigned the investigation to their hate crimes unit.
Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a gay state senator in New York, said he was “heartbroken and enraged” by Sibley’s murder.
“Gay joy is not a crime,” he wrote on Twitter. “Hate fueled attacks are.”
In the Facebook video uploaded by Pena, Sibley’s friend, he describes the dancer as his brother. “We as a community do not deserve this. We may be gay, but we exist. We will not live in fear. We are not going to live hiding.”
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2023-08-01 20:41:00
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