A suspect was arrested in connection with the fatal stabbing of a 28-year-old gay man at a Brooklyn gas station last weekend, law enforcement sources told NBC News on Friday.
The suspect turned himself in at a police station in Brooklyn, the sources said.
O’Shae Sibley, a professional dancer and choreographer, was stabbed to death Saturday evening in what authorities are investigating as a possible hate crime.
New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, whose district includes the gas station where Sibley was stabbed, confirmed the update on social media Friday afternoon.
“The suspect in the fatal stabbing of O’Shae Sibley in my district last Saturday night just turned himself in to the @NYPD61Pct & is now in their custody,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Wishing the family peace during this difficult time & hoping for swift justice & serious consequences for the perpetrator.”
Earlier this week, officials said the New York City Police Department’s hate crimes task force was investigating Sibley’s death.
A 17-year-old suspect was being sought by police in connection with the fatal stabbing, NBC New York previously reported. It is unclear if the arrested suspect is the 17-year-old that police had been looking for.
The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sibley was playing music from Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” album and vogue dancing on Saturday when he was approached by a group of men who told him to stop, witnesses said. They added that he tried to de-escalate the situation before he was stabbed in the torso.
One of the men wanted Sibley to stop dancing and after “a few fights and back and forth arguing, he pulled out a knife and stabbed him,” witness Sayeda Haider said, according to NBC New York.
Otis Pena, a friend of Sibley’s who said he witnessed the stabbing, shared a video about the fatal incident on Facebook on Sunday.
“They murdered him because he’s gay, because he stood up for his friends,” Pena, who described Sibley as “the salt to my pepper,” said in the video. “His name was O’Shae, and you all killed him. You all murdered him right in front of me.”
Sibley’s stabbing coincides with a surge in anti-LGBTQ demonstrations across the nation within the last year.
Since June 2022, there has been an average of 39 anti-LGBTQ protests nationwide each month, according to a recent report by the Crowd Counting Consortium, a research group that tracks the size of political protests. In comparison, the group recorded just three protests per month from January 2017 through May 2022.
In particular, the demonstrations have made headlines in recent months for occurring in New York City, which has the largest population of LGBTQ people in the nation, according to the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA Law.
Dozens of Pride flags were damaged and ripped down at the Stonewall National Monument — the site of a June 1969 uprising that is widely considered to be a critical point in the modern queer rights movement — at least three times in June, which is LGBTQ Pride month.
