New York Man Convicted of Hate Crime Killing of Black Gay Dancer O’Shae Sibley
A jury acquitted the man on the most serious charges, to which one of Sibley’s friends said resulted in “half justice.”
Featured image: Protesters demonstrate after the death of O’Shae Sibley. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.
A jury convicted the man who fatally stabbed Black gay dancer O’Shae Sibley, who had been voguing to Beyoncé while he and friends were getting gas.
Twenty-year-old Dmitriy Popov was convicted of manslaughter as a hate crime on Monday. He was 17 when he killed Sibley with a five-and-a-half-inch knife to the chest.
Sibley was 28. He and his friends had been at a beach in New Jersey. Security footage from the gas station showed Sibley hanging out around a car as Beyoncé played, according to The New York Times.
Sibley’s friend Otis Pena testified during Popov’s trial that the queer men “were living our best lives.”
Popov and his friends are seen in the video yelling racist and homophobic slurs at Sibley and his friends, who were all queer men of color, the paper reports. Footage shows Sibley walking up to the group calmly with sunflower seeds in his hands. Popov’s friends left, and Sibley and his friends also turned around to leave. However, as Sibley’s friends left, the video shows Popov pull out his knife and point it at one of the men with Sibley. Sibley ran toward Popov, who plunged the knife into the dancer.
The killing led to vigils across the city, and Beyoncé’s website even read “Rest in Power O’Shae Sibley.”
Popov, who is white, had faced a total of nine charges, including two counts of second-degree murder as hate crimes, two counts of first-degree manslaughter as hate crimes, and aggravated harassment because of race, religion, or sexual orientation.
The jury acquitted Popov of most of the charges. The charge he was convicted of, manslaughter as a hate crime, carries a sentence of eight to 25 years in prison. The Times reports that jurors deliberated two and a half days before convicting Popov.
Popov had taken the stand during the trial, arguing that he had acted in self-defense. Prosecutors said that Sibley had tried to take Popov’s knife away and that Popov could have left instead of stabbing Sibley.
Popov said he didn’t see any weapons on Sibley or his friends. He admitted that he threw his phone away after he had recorded the interaction at the gas station leading up to the stabbing.
“It was not justified. It’s not self-defense. It was not legal. It was murder,” Sarah Jafari, a senior assistant district attorney, said.
According to the Times, jurors seemed to be confused about the laws behind the various charges, including the murder charges.
Several of Sibley’s friends shook their heads as the verdicts were announced, according to the paper. Joshua Sanchez, who was at the gas station when Sibley was killed by Popov and testified against Popov, said the outcome was “half justice.”
“He got off easy,” Sanchez said. He added that he remembered the “hate that came out of [Popov’s] mouth, out of his soul.”
“It didn’t feel like manslaughter,” he said.
Popov is scheduled to be sentenced on June 30.
