NEW YORK (AP) — Police have an individual in custody in reference to the demise of O’Shae Sibley, a homosexual man who was fatally stabbed after a confrontation between a bunch of pals dancing to a Beyoncé track and several other younger males who taunted them, authorities mentioned Friday.
The New York Metropolis Police Division declined to right away determine the particular person or say what felony expenses they’d face, if any, describing them solely as a “particular person of curiosity.”
Sibley, a 28-year-old skilled dancer, died July 29 after being stabbed within the torso at a Brooklyn fuel station. His demise outraged New York Metropolis’s LGBTQ+ group and drew tributes from celebrities together with Beyoncé and Spike Lee.
AP Picture/Tracie Van Auken
AP Picture/Tracie Van Auken
Sibley was at a Mobil station with pals getting fuel, listening to music and dancing shirtless on a sizzling evening once they had been heckled by a bunch of younger males. One witness, Summy Ullah, mentioned in interviews that the lads complained that their habits offended them as Muslims.
Safety digicam video confirmed the 2 teams arguing for a couple of minutes. Either side had walked away when Sibley and a buddy abruptly returned and once more confronted one of many younger males, who had stayed behind recording on his telephone.
On the video, Sibley might be seen following the the teenager after which lunging at him earlier than the 2 disappeared out of the digicam’s view. A second later, he walks backward into view, checking his facet, then collapses to the sidewalk.
Certainly one of Sibley’s pals who was there, Otis Pena, mentioned in a Fb video that Sibley was killed as a result of he was homosexual, and “as a result of he stood up for his pals.”
Sibley carried out with the dance firm Philadanco in his native Philadelphia and in New York, the place he took lessons with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Ailey Extension program.
Mayor Eric Adams has promised “justice for O’Shae’s household and family members.”
“O’Shae Sibley’s life and exquisite spirit had been minimize quick by homophobia,” Adams mentioned in a message posted on social media Tuesday. “Bigotry can by no means take root in our metropolis.”