An unfortunate run-in between two groups of men resulted in the stabbing death of a Brooklyn man, a popular fixture on the LGBTQ+ ballroom scene. O’Shea Sibley’s love for the popular “vogue” style of dance collided with homophobic violence on Saturday, July 29, at a neighborhood gas station. Now, a 17-year-old suspect is said to be on the run.
, Sibley and the attacker fell into a dispute over his dance moves at a gas pump. After an attendant tried to intervene, the 17-year-old stabbed the 28-year-old dancer in the chest. He was later pronounced dead at a local hospital. Law enforcement on the scene said the stabbing suspect, who identified as Muslim, was offended by the dancing of Sibley and the scantily clad outfit he was dressed in. His friends and loved ones expressed fear surrounding his safety as an openly gay Black man in the days leading up to the attack. “I texted him that morning to tell him [I] wanted to talk to him to tell him to tell his friends to be careful, you know, because you have to be careful how you present yourself,” Beckenbaur Hamilton, a friend of the deceased, said. “They don’t live in the neighborhood we live in, it’s a very homophobic neighborhood, and they were out here dancing.”For Black LGBTQ+ people, there is a constant battle to truly feel safe and protected even in the neighborhoods they’ve lived in their whole lives. As new laws are passed to strip the community of its human rights, increasing concerns about homophobic people feeling justified in their hate crimes similar to this stabbing is prevalent. “There is no progress. Progress? Yes. But we here don’t see it. We have to live stifled,” Hamilton continued. “We live here in a community where we have to pretend to be somebody else.”