Lawyer says teen accused of stabbing gay man to death is “a good Christian boy”

The 17-year-old who was arrested in connection to the stabbing death of a gay man is apparently “a good Christian boy,” according to his attorney.

According to witnesses and security camera footage, 28-year-old professional dancer and gay man O’Shea Sibley was voguing to a song from Beyoncé’s Rennaissance album in pink shorts at a gas station in Brooklyn on July 29 when a group of young men told him to stop. One witness said that the young men cited their Muslim faith as a reason that Sibley had to stop dancing, and others said that they used anti-gay and anti-Black slurs.

Related Stories The LGBTQ+ community mourns O’Shae Sibley in memorials across New York City

“My god. My god. They have to stop doing this,” said one speaker. “We Black, beautiful gorgeous jewels are the most important things in this world.”

One of the teens stabbed Sibley in the side, piercing his heart. He later died at Maimonides Medical Center.

Get the Daily Brief The news you care about, reported on by the people who care about you.

“There were a lot of anti-gay statements and derogatory anti-Black statements,” Assistant Chief of the NYPD detective bureau Joseph Kenny said on Saturday. “There were a lot of people from the community acting like peacemakers.”

On Friday, 17-year-old Dmitriy Popov was arrested in connection to the killing and now faces charges of murder as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon after he turned himself in to police through his lawyers. This was after he tried to evade law enforcement for a week by shaving his head and turning off his phone.

Popov’s defense attorney, Mark Pollard, talked to PIX11 and explained that his client isn’t Muslim and is in fact Christian.

The statement may be an attempt to cast doubt on investigators as court papers say that Popov said: “Stop dancing here. We are Muslim. Get that gay s**t out of here.”

“If it’s easily proven beyond a reasonable doubt, let’s just say, that he’s Christian and he’s not Muslim, it casts a lot of doubt on whatever witnesses are saying,” attorney Arthur Aidala, who is familiar with the case but not working on it, said.

At court this week, his lawyer tried to get his case moved to family court since he is 17 and also asked for bail to be set. Judge Craig Walker cited Popov’s attempt to flee for a week as reason to hold him until trial.

Popov’s mother also came to her son’s defense in a similar way to Pollard. He’s a “good boy” who goes to church, she said as she read a statement outside court.

“My heart goes out to the family of Mr. Sibley,” she said, only identifying herself as “Lana.” “I know they are in pain as we are as well. My son is a good boy. He was working at two jobs and goes to church and school.”

“He is not that what’s being said about him.”

His grandmother also said, the New York Daily News reports, that Popov is Christian and wears a cross and that he loves his older brother’s Black wife.

“I’m going to miss that soul,” Sibley’s mother Onetha Sibley said. “But I hope justice is served because this is tragic. It didn’t have to happen.”