New York’s creative group is mourning the dying of dancer O’Shae Sibley, who was stabbed exterior of a fuel station in Midwood, Brooklyn on Saturday night time. Police responded to a 911 name round 11:15pm on July 29. Sibley, a 28-year-old Black homosexual man, was taken to Maimonides Medical Middle, the place he was pronounced lifeless. The New York Police Division advised Hyperallergic that it’s investigating the dying as a “doable biased incident.”
Sibley and 4 buddies had been dancing and vogueing (a type of dance born out of Harlem’s queer ballroom scene within the Eighties and characterised by catwalk-style poses and stylized arm gestures) to the music of Beyoncé close to the fuel pumps of the Coney Island Avenue and Avenue P Mobil Station. A buyer exited the shop and confronted the dancing group of buddies earlier than being joined by a number of different males leaving the shop. Gasoline station store employee Summy Ullah advised Gothamist that the scary group stated the dancing offended them as Muslims.
The crime was caught on safety footage. After a verbal altercation, Sibley and his buddies started strolling again to their automobile when one of many males within the attacking group began filming. Sibley and his buddies made their method again towards the lads exterior the storefront and the 2 teams walked across the nook of the constructing, the place one of many males stabbed Sibley within the torso. Sibley collapsed on the sidewalk exterior of the fuel station.
Ullah stated he acknowledged the attackers as a smoke store employee and his buddies, who regularly used the fuel station store’s toilet. Police are reportedly trying to find a 17-year-old suspect. No arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing.
Sibley’s buddy Otis Pena, who was with him on the fuel station, posted a Facebook Live video on Sunday, July 30. He stated the group of buddies had gone to the seaside to have fun his birthday and stopped on the fuel station on the best way again to his house two blocks away. He acknowledged that the attackers had launched homophobic slurs and that Sibley had responded with, “Yeah, we’re homosexual, however we’re simply celebrating my brother’s birthday.”
“They murdered him as a result of he was homosexual, as a result of he stood up for his buddies,” Pena says within the video, his eyes purple as he fights again tears. “And so they stabbed him, proper within the coronary heart. They took the one factor I all the time fought for. They killed my brother proper in entrance of me. I’m lined in his blood.” He describes holding Sibley and placing his hand on the stab wound.
Sibley moved from Philadelphia to New York Metropolis in 2019 and lived in Brownsville, Brooklyn. He was a member of the celebrated Philadelphia dance troupe Philadanco and carried out in artist Jacolby Satterwhite’s “An Eclectic Dance to the Music of Time” (2022) at Manhattan’s Lincoln Middle final yr, a commissioned video work that comes with archival footage, trendy dance, and digital illustration to discover the historical past of the New York Philharmonic.
“The shoot with O’Shae and different queer black performers blew my thoughts,” Satterwhite stated in an announcement he shared with Hyperallergic and posted to his Instagram account at present, August 1. “As a result of they fused classical, trendy, and voguing dance types, exuding confidence and proof of social progress, and a need for a world stage they really deserved. Their artistry transcended mere survival and coping, breaking free from the struggles of queer generations earlier than them.”
Sibley was additionally featured in artist Kemar Jewel’s 2021 video “SOFT: A Love Letter to Black Queer Men” and was an energetic member of dance studios across the metropolis.
“Anybody who ever met O’Shae was very blessed to know him,” Jewel, who met Sibley in Philadelphia and thought of him a nephew, wrote on Instagram. “He was humorous, distinctive, charismatic and all the time knew the right way to have an excellent time. Most significantly, he cherished HARD!!! He went above and past for his family members and made positive nobody was ever unhappy round him.”
Hate crimes in the US have been on the rise since 2014, and in 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) reported the best quantity because it started amassing information within the Nineties. Underreporting and variations in state policing legal guidelines imply the actual numbers are possible a lot higher, however the FBI’s information can nonetheless illuminate alarming tendencies. Hate crimes in opposition to Black folks constituted the best proportion total at slightly over 31%; anti-Asian assaults rose by 167%; assaults in opposition to homosexual males rose by 41%; and hate crimes in opposition to LGBTQ+ folks generally rose by 70% from 2020 to 2021.
The incident comes amid a wave of laws focusing on the LGBTQ+ group and drag performances throughout the nation. Based on a 2022 report by the Williams Institute on the UCLA College of Regulation, LGBTQ+ individuals are 9 occasions extra prone to be victims of violent hate crimes.