NEW YORK (AP) — A jury convicted a man of manslaughter as a hate crime on Monday in the death of O’Shae Sibley, who was killed at a Brooklyn gas station during a confrontation that began with a group of young people shouting racist and anti-gay slurs at the professional dancer and his friends as they vogued to a Beyoncé song.
Dmitriy Popov, 20, who was 17 at the time of the killing, testified at trial that he was just defending himself when he stabbed Sibley, 28, in 2023.
Prosecutors said Popov acted out of hate, taunting and jeering at Sibley, then killing him when he reacted to the provocations.
The verdict on the first-degree manslaughter charge capped a three-week trial in New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.
The jury, which began deliberation a week ago, also convicted Popov of second-degree menacing, second-degree aggravated harassment and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, but acquitted him of a more serious charge of murder as a hate crime, which carried the potential of a life sentence.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a release that it was his “hope that as the LGBTQ+ community celebrates the beginning of Pride Month, this verdict will bring O’Shae’s family, his friends, and the larger community some measure of solace. Hate has no place in Brooklyn.”
He also said Sibley’s dream was of being a dancer and choreographer and his life was “cut short when he was killed by this defendant, who couldn’t stand the sight of O’Shae and his friends just being themselves and living their lives openly as black gay men.”
Defense attorney Mark Pollard said he will appeal the verdict, which was “probably bittersweet for both sides.”
“We're happy he wasn't guilty of murder but disappointed he wasn't acquitted on the rest of the charges,” he said.
The lawyer said his client faces a minimum of eight years in prison on the manslaughter charge and a maximum of 25 years.
Popov is scheduled to be sentenced on June 30.
Sibley and his friends had stopped at the gas station after a beach outing on July 29, 2023. When they were pumping gas, one of them began dancing, drawing the attention of a nearby group of young men and teenagers. Some of the people in that group began taunting and jeering at the dancing men, some of whom were shirtless and wearing bathing suits.
Security camera video, played at the trial, recorded the encounter.
The two groups argued for about two minutes, then started to go their separate ways. Sibley's group went back to their car. Most of the other men went back inside the gas station — except for Popov.
Witnesses testified at trial that Popov shouted insults as he recorded with his phone. He denied using any bigoted language.
Sibley then confronted Popov again, lunging around a man who tried to step between the pair. Popov testified that Sibley chased him and punched him in the head. The security camera video didn't show the fatal blow, but Popov testified that he stabbed Sibley with a 5-and-a-half-inch blade as he tried to protect himself.
“I was scared that I was going to get hurt,” Popov testified.
Sibley performed with the Philadelphia-based dance company Philadanco and took classes with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s Ailey Extension program in New York. He also used dance to celebrate his LGBTQ+ identity in works such as “Soft: A Love Letter to Black Queer Men,” choreographed by Kemar Jewel.
Sibley's funeral in his hometown of Philadelphia attracted about 200 people. Politicians and celebrities, including Beyoncé and Spike Lee, paid tribute in social media posts.
Popov was born in the U.S. to a family of Russian origin and was a high school senior at the time of his arrest.
FILE - People gather at a gas station during a vigil to memorialize O'Shae Sibley, Aug. 4, 2023, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/Tracie Van Auken, File)
FILE - A person holds up a photo of O'Shae Sibley during a vigil at a gas station, Aug. 4, 2023, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/Tracie Van Auken, File)
Three more cases of the New World screwworm have been confirmed, including one outside the main cluster in Texas, demonstrating the difficulty of stopping a resurgent pest that could devastate the nation's cattle industry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Monday.
The screwworm is actually a fly larva that eats living flesh instead of dead material. The flies lay their eggs in open wounds of animals like cattle, but wildlife, pets and occasionally even humans can be infested. The government has a program to breed sterile male flies and drop swarms of them from planes to mate with wild females, which kept screwworm contained at the southern end of Panama for decades.
So far, there are five confirmed cases: three calves and a goat in Texas and a dog from neighboring Lea County, New Mexico. The dog, which the USDA initially reported as a Texas case, lives in New Mexico and was reclassified as the first in that state. The animal's travel history is being investigated.
The first two screwworm cases were discovered last week in calves a few miles apart in south Texas. A case was announced Monday in a calf in La Salle County, southwest of San Antonio, and in a goat in Gillespie County, west of Austin.
Scientists expect new cases could pop up in the coming days and weeks, but it doesn't mean screwworm is spreading rapidly, said Edward Burgess, a University of Florida entomologist who studies the fly.
“When that first case is seen, everyone is being vigilant and their eyes are on it more intensely,” Burgess said. “And when you are looking for something, you are more likely to see it.”
Screwworm gets its name from the maggots’ habit of burrowing — or screwing — into a wound, according to the USDA.
The agency and the U.S. cattle industry have been racing to prevent an outbreak since screwworm was detected in Mexico late in 2024. The USDA has been dropping sterile flies in south Texas since February, and is working to both increase sterile fly production in plants outside the U.S. and build a $750 million fly factory in Texas.
So far, screwworm's reappearance hasn’t greatly affected beef prices, which are already near record levels because there are fewer cows in the United States. Although the parasite attacks live cattle, it does not infest meat or fruit. There are also a dozen government-approved medications to treat livestock.
Canada temporarily stopped importing cattle, horses or other livestock from Texas on Friday. The parasites prefer humid areas where temperatures are at least 77 F (25 C), making them more of a summer problem up north.
Burgess said the long-term solution — breeding sterile male flies — is months away. Since wild female flies mate just once, if that encounter is with a sterile male, outbreaks can eventually be halted as the flies die out.
The goal is to have enough sterile flies to stop the pests from returning in 2027 after the winter kills off most of them, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said at a news conference at the U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory in Kerrville, Texas.
Scientists are also working on ways to sterilize only male flies to make the program even more effective.
Texas officials encouraged ranchers to keep a close eye on their herds and local wildlife. There's now a 24-hour screwworm hotline and a website and map for reported cases.
“This is a highly treatable condition if you act on it immediately,” Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said.
However, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller — who lost the recent Republican primary to a candidate backed by Abbott — said the federal response will take too long and risks crippling the cattle industry.
Instead, he says a poison bait could eliminate the screwworm problem in a few months, even if the USDA and other experts say the bait hasn’t been proven effective and could poison other flies, animals and even humans.
“What the hell is a good fly?” Miller said in an interview.
This story has been updated to reflect that the USDA revised the dog screwworm case to New Mexico, not Texas as the agency initially reported, and to correct the spelling of Kerrville.
Associated Press writer Scott McFetridge in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.
FILE - A test container of dyed fly pupae are displayed at a Domestic New World Screwworm Sterile Fly Production Facility to combat the northward spread of NWS and protect American livestock, in Edinburg, Texas, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
FILE - An adult New World screwworm fly sits in this undated photo. (Denise Bonilla/U.S. Department of Agriculture via AP)
