Teenager charged with hate crime in fatal stabbing of O’Shae Sibley in Brooklyn

The 17-year-old suspect arrested in connection with the fatal stabbing of a 28-year-old gay man at a Brooklyn gas station was charged with murder as a hate crime, officials said Saturday.

The suspect turned himself in at a police station in Brooklyn, law enforcement sources told NBC News on Friday.

O’Shae Sibley, a professional dancer and choreographer, was stabbed to death on July 29.

Sibley was playing music from Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” album and vogue dancing when he was approached by a group of men who told him to stop, witnesses said. They added that he tried to de-escalate the situation before he was stabbed in the torso. 

One of the men wanted Sibley to stop dancing and after “a few fights and back and forth arguing, he pulled out a knife and stabbed him,” witness Sayeda Haider said, according to NBC New York.

Mayor Eric Adams said Saturday the stabbing was “clearly” a hate crime.

“Good afternoon, but in fact, there’s nothing good about the reason that we are gathered here, to just express our heartfelt condolences to the O’Shae family,” he told reporters. “He could be my son. And oftentimes when you have incidents like this, you reflect outside of your professional status and move to your personal status. Parents lost a child.”

The teenage suspect, from Brooklyn, was also charged with criminal possession of a weapon.

Otis Pena, a friend of Sibley’s who said he witnessed the stabbing, shared a video on Facebook the next day about the fatal incident.

“They murdered him because he’s gay, because he stood up for his friends,” Pena, who described Sibley as “the salt to my pepper,” said in the video. “His name was O’Shae, and you all killed him. You all murdered him right in front of me.”