DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN – A SHEEPSHEAD BAY MAN on Thursday was sentenced to 20 years in prison for fatally stabbing a professional dancer in 2023, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced.
Dmitriy Popov, 20, was tried as an adult, and convicted of manslaughter as a hate crime last month.
On the night of July 29, 2023, O’Shae Sibley, 28, and four friends stopped to fill up at a Midwood gas station, and began dancing to music. Popov and two friends, inside the gas station, then hurled homophobic and racist slurs at the group.
Sibley and his friends attempted to diffuse the situation, but Popov continued to antagonize them, leading to a confrontation. Popov then pointed a knife at one of Sibley’s friends, threatening to stab him, before stabbing Sibley in the chest. Sibley was pronounced dead at Maimonides Hospital a short time later.
Popov had attempted to argue during trial that he had acted in self-defense and feared for his life, but offered unsatisfactory answers to questions from prosecutors as to what had happened to a cellphone video he took of the confrontation.
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