CNN
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The 17-year-old suspected of fatally stabbing O’Shae Sibley has been charged with murder as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon, New York officials said Saturday.
Sibley, a 28-year-old professional dancer, was stabbed to death at a Brooklyn gas station after dancing to a Beyoncé song last weekend.
A friend of Sibley’s said the dancer was performing a style of dance called vogueing on July 29 when a group of men shouting anti-gay slurs approached Sibley and his friends, leading to a dispute, according to police.
The friend who witnessed the escalating incident said one man stabbed Sibley, who was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, according to police.
Joseph Kenny, assistant chief at the NYPD’s detective bureau, said the suspect is the only person who will be charged in relation to the incident at this point. Police arranged his surrender through his attorney on Friday, Kenny said.
The teenager is from Brooklyn and attends a nearby high school, according to Kenny.
Officials did not name the suspect during a news conference Saturday. A spokesperson with the New York City Police Department said he did not know whether the suspect would be charged as an adult.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who also spoke at the news conference, referred to the stabbing as “something that was clearly a hate crime.”
“This is a city where you are free to express yourself, and that expression should never end with any form of violence,” Adams said.
The suspect is being charged with a hate crime “based on the statements from the group in general,” Kenny said.
“You have a lot of anti-gay statements, and a lot of derogatory statements being made – anti-Black – from the group and from the defendant himself,” he said.
Sibley’s funeral will be held Tuesday in Philadelphia, according to an online obituary.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled O’Shae Sibley’s name.
