A knife-wielding teen charged with fatally stabbing a gay Black dancer was offended by the man’s shirtless voguing and acted out of hatred, “like your typical bully, walking around armed with a weapon,” prosecutors argued at his trial in Brooklyn Monday.
Dmitriy Popov, was 17 years old when he knifed O’Shae Sibley at the Mobil station on Coney Island Ave. near Avenue P in Midwood on July 29, 2023, prosecutors allege, in a crime that drew national attention — including a reaction from Beyoncé, who posted a tribute to the victim on her web page.
Popov, now 20, is on trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court charged as an adult for murder as a hate crime, and is claiming self defense.
In her opening statement Monday, Assistant D.A. Sarah Jafari told jurors that Popov and his friends from. a nearby smoke shop mocked and tormented Sibley and his group, who were returning home after a day at the beach, exuberantly dancing in their swimsuits to Beyoncé as they pumped gas.
“You cannot provoke an argument based on hate and use that confrontation as an excuse to kill another human being,” Jafari said. “It’s going to be clear to you at the end of this case that this is not a case of self defense…. This is a case about hate, about bigotry, about ignorance, and about violence.”
Sibley, 28, and his four friends were returning from a trip to the Jersey Shore to celebrate the birthday of one member of their group, Otis Pena, when they pulled over to get gas just after 11 a.m. They were all wearing their bathing suits, no tops, and Pena’s bathing suit was essentially a jock strap, the prosecutor said.
“They were living their best lives. But this is the time when the defendant’s group collided with O’Shae’s friends,” Jafari said. Popov and two of his friends walked over from the smoke shop where they walked to the gas station and entered the attached Bolla Market, and when they saw the dancing scene outside, they decided they’d seen enough. One of Popov’s pals launched into a string of slurs.
“Get the f— out of here, you f—-ts, get the f— out. We don’t do that gay s— here. We’re Muslim. Get the f— out,” Jafari recounted. Popov’s lawyer has said he’s Christian, not Muslim.
Sibley approached Popov’s group and explained, “We’re just trying to have fun,” only for the man yelling at them to respond, “I don’t give a f—. We don’t do that gay s— around here,” Jafari said. At one point in the confrontation, a member of Popov’s group used the n-word, she said.
Eventually, both Sibley and Popov’s groups split up, the confrontation seemingly over, but Popov stood outside the store, phone out as if he was recording, and continued taunting them with slurs, Jafari said.
“Why does he do that when everyone else has left? I submit to you because of that knife in his pocket. It was that knife that emboldened him,” she said.
Sibley and two of his friends walked back to Popov, visibly annoyed, but still in their bathing suits and clearly unarmed, and Popov pulled out a knife, telling one of them,” Come on, get stabbed,” Jafari said.
Sibley, trying to get between Popov and his friends, made contact with the teen, palms out and open handed, and Popov stabbed him in the heart, Jafari said.
Jurors saw a 40-minute compilation video of the confrontation and the run-up to it — all silent, except for a 911 call played over one video after the stabbing, and a clip from a responding NYPD officer’s body camera.
Sibley can be seen standing as blood pours out of his wound and onto the pavement, then sitting and laying down as he loses more blood.
“O’Shae was living his life out and proud. There will be no mistaking that in the final moments of his life, he was faced with the hate and bigotry of this defendant and his friends, just because of who he was,” Jafari said. “For all of O’Shae’s accomplishments and dreams, all this defendant and his friends saw was someone to insult, to disparage, to put down, to disrespect.”
Popov’s lawyer, Mark Pollard, told the jury that the video shows a different story, and doesn’t capture the his young client’s nervousness and fear.
“Oh man, oh man, I cannot wait till you all see the video in this case,:” he said at the start of his opening argument. “I bet right now, you’re going to say, ‘Oh my goodness, that was self defense.’ Let me tell you what this case is really about. This case is about a few terrifying seconds in the life of a 17 -year-old boy, not a man.”
“Wait till you see how he looked two years ago — frail, skinny, fragile, puny. He was afraid for his life in a chaotic situation,” Pollard said.
Pollard said Sibley and his friends came after Popov after the confrontation had calmed down. “They assaulted him,” the defense lawyer countered.
Popov will testify in his own defense, his lawyer vowed.
“He’s going to take the stand and tell you what actually happened,” he said. “But guess what, you don’t have to rely on what he has to say because there’s video…. You’re going to see those videos.You’re going to say, ‘Oh my goodness, look at that, that was reasonable.’”
Jurors also heard brief testimony from Sibley’s mother, Onetha Sibley who described how he grew up in Philadelphia, started dancing at age 12, and turned it into a career. He called her the morning of the killing, she recounted.
“He just told me that he was tired, and he had class… and he wanted to go to the beach,” she said. They never spoke again, and the next morning, Philadelphia cops turned up at her door to tell her he was dead.
After describing how she identified a photo of Sibley’s bother, she broke down in tears, gasping, “I’m so sorry! Oh! Oh!”
The trial continues Tuesday.
