The 17-year-old boy accused with the second-degree murder of a gay man in New York as a hate crime has pleaded not guilty.
O’Shae Sibley and his friends got into a brawl with other youths while voguing at a petrol station in Brooklyn on July 29th.
The defendant is accused of stabbing Mr. Sibley in the chest after the kids reportedly hurled homophobic and racist slurs at him.
If convicted on adult charges, the accused aggressor faces between 20 and life in prison.
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On Friday, he appeared in court for the first time as Dmitriy Popov, a senior at a local high school.
Nothing in his past or experience indicates he would be the kind of person to do this conduct, according to his attorney, Mark Pollard.
Although he said that his client had not used insulting words, he did say that his client may claim self-defense.
The prosecution’s declared purpose is to show that the suspect’s “senseless” and “targeted” behavior was motivated by his anti-black and anti-LGBT hatred.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez remarked during a news conference on Thursday, “We’re going to stand up for Mr. Sibley, for the right he had to dance and be exuberant, for the right he had not to stop dancing because it offended someone else.”
A victim of a hate crime is not the only one who faces repercussions. As a consequence, the community as a whole loses its sense of safety and security.
Mr. Sibley and his friends were heading back from the beach when they stopped at a gas station in Brooklyn’s Midwood area.
They were pumping gas and voguing to Beyoncé’s Renaissance, an album generally recognized as a love letter to black gay dance culture, a dance technique associated with artistic expression and resistance in LGBT communities.
On security video, the two groups are shown walking away from a heated fight before Mr. Sibley returns with his phone and rushes at the 17-year-old.
While the prosecution believes Mr. Sibley’s conduct did not justify the “cause for someone to take a weapon and do what was done in this case,” they do believe the juvenile stabbed Mr. Sibley out of camera view.
Vigils and demonstrations, including voguing, have been held in cities around the nation in reaction to a murder that has greatly affected many members of the LGBT community, including New York and Los Angeles.
Almost 200 people came at Philadelphia’s renowned opera house on Tuesday to pay their respects to Mr. Sibley.
“O’Shae had the power to touch everyone’s heart, whoever met him,” said Otis Pena, a close friend who was present at the petrol station. O’Shae was a role model for many individuals in our area.
Mr. Sibley has been dancing since he was three years old, and his achievements have been well recognized. He has performed with the Philadelphia Dance Company and taught at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
They said that they are doing it “to encourage other students like him to follow their dreams” by creating a scholarship in his honour at the dance school.
