Around 11 p.m. on July 29, 2023, Robert “Otis” Pena and four of his friends were driving back to Pena’s place in Midwood, Brooklyn after a birthday celebration. The group — all gay men of color — had spent the day at the clothing-optional, LGBTQ-friendly Gunnison Beach in New Jersey.
As they pulled into a gas station a few blocks from Pena's house to refuel, they were blasting Beyoncé’s "Renaissance" album on a speaker in the car. Pena got out to dance.
“We’re just goofing around, dancing,” he recalled in Brooklyn Supreme Criminal Court last week as surveillance footage of the moment played on screens around the courtroom.
Within moments, the giddy birthday celebration turned deadly. Dmitriy Popov, a white 17-year-old customer at the gas station, shouted homophobic slurs and then stabbed Pena's friend, 28-year-old O'Shae Sibley, puncturing his heart and killing him, according to prosecutors.
Popov, now 20, is being tried as an adult in Brooklyn on a slew of charges, including second-degree murder as a hate crime. If convicted of the most serious crime, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Sibley’s friends who were with him that night have taken the stand one after the next, describing the moments before his pink bathing suit turned red with blood and he was rushed off in an ambulance.
“What the hell just happened?” Pena recalled thinking.
Prosecutors, who continue to make their case this week, have played surveillance video of the fatal encounter from several different angles at trial. They have zoomed in on a portion of the video that they said shows Popov holding a knife in his hand moments before the stabbing. Footage then shows Sibley running toward Popov.
Senior Assistant District Attorney Sarah Jafari said in her opening statement that Sibley was trying to protect one of his friends from getting stabbed after Popov made a threat. But Popov’s defense attorney, Mark Pollard, argued the stabbing was an act of self-defense from a “frail, skinny, puny” teen facing “strong, in shape men” in a chaotic situation.
“This is about a few terrifying seconds in the life of a 17-year-old boy — not man,” Pollard said in his opening statement.
The fatal stabbing rocked New York City’s queer and dance communities. Sibley, whom prosecutors have referred to as an “out and proud” gay Black man and professional dancer, had performed at Lincoln Center and taken classes at the renowned Alvin Ailey Extension. More than a dozen of his loved ones have come to court, mostly in black clothing, listening intently to the proceedings and occasionally breaking down in sobs. Several members of Popov’s family have sat on the other side of the courtroom, at times sighing or wiping their eyes during intense moments of testimony.
Surveillance footage and testimony presented so far at trial has shed new light on how Sibley was killed. Multiple witnesses have testified that Popov and his friends repeatedly shouted homophobic — and, in at least one case, racist — slurs before stabbing him.
“I felt like my life didn’t matter,” Philip Wilson, one of Sibley’s friends who was there that night, testified.
Two groups collide at a Midwood gas station
Sibley grew up in Philadelphia and started dancing when he was 12 years old, his mother, Onetha Sibley, testified. After dancing with the Philadelphia Dance Company, also known as Philadanco, he decided to move to New York City in 2019 for better opportunities, his mother said.
“He just had a passion — a strong passion for it,” she testified. “He was always dancing somewhere.”
Sibley came to New York with his friend Pena, whom he had met several years earlier through Philadanco, Pena testified. They started in the shelter system and sought support from a city program that helps shelter residents to secure housing. By 2023, Pena had moved to Midwood and had established an annual tradition of celebrating his birthday with his friends at Gunnison Beach, he said.
Pena, Sibley, Wilson, Joshua Sanchez and Devon Washington rented a car and drove down to the Jersey Shore that day. The four who weren’t driving shared a flask of tequila and a couple of marijuana joints over the course of a few hours, several of them testified. A sudden rainstorm soaked all their belongings and they headed home in their bathing suits, Pena said.
As they were making their way to Pena's home, surveillance footage played at trial shows a different scene unfolding at the Midwood smoke shop where Popov worked. That video shows Popov and several other young men or teens standing around a screen, watching what prosecutors said was an Ultimate Fighting Championship match. Around 11 p.m., they walked partway down the block to the Mobil gas station on the corner of Coney Island Avenue and Avenue P.
While Popov’s group was inside the gas station's minimart, Sibley’s group pulled into the station to refuel. Security footage shows Sibley, wearing a bathing suit with no shirt, stretching his legs by the pump while Pena, in just a jock strap, moved around the parking lot doing what he called the “raisin in potato salad dance.”
Then, several of Sibley’s friends testified that Popov and an unidentified person came out of the market and started shouting homophobic slurs. Sanchez said they were yelling to “get the f--- out of here with that gay s---.” Sanchez also testified that one of them said he was Muslim and “we don’t believe in that s---.” Surveillance footage shows Popov standing on the sidewalk by the door to the market, holding up his phone as if he were recording.
Pena went back to the car and threw on a pair of shorts, he testified. Sibley walked up to Popov and his friend, holding sunflower seeds in his hands, “to try to be the peacemaker,” Sanchez said. Sanchez followed Sibley to try to get him to leave, because he said his friend was being “nonchalant” while the other group was screaming and being aggressive. Then, Sanchez said, someone called him a slur and told him he sounded like a girl.
Just because they had different sexual identities didn’t mean they couldn’t coexist in the same place, Sanchez recalled saying.
‘I didn’t want to stay there anymore’
A gas station clerk testified that he walked outside and told both groups to leave. Surveillance footage shows them going their separate ways, other than Popov, who stayed at the door with his phone raised. Wilson testified that it was unnerving to feel like he was being recorded.
“I think that’s quite aggressive,” he said.
As Popov continued to stand by himself with his phone up, Pena said, he cursed and called them homophobic slurs, prompting Pena and Sibley to walk back toward him. Pena said at first he wanted to know why Popov was continuing to harass them. But then, he said, Popov appeared to get in a “fighting stance,” and Pena decided to leave.
“It was just time to go,” he testified. “I didn’t want to stay there anymore. The night was already ruined.”
Surveillance footage shows Popov taking a few steps backward, then walking down the sidewalk as Sibley and Washington walked toward him. The footage also appears to show Popov putting his phone in his pocket and taking out a knife.
At that point, the gas station clerk testified, he was back outside and trying to separate the groups once again. The footage shows Sibley run at Popov, pushing him back. Then, Popov walked toward his friends, and Sibley followed, according to the video. The footage shows Popov hoisting his arm toward Sibley, then darting off with his friends toward the smoke shop. Surveillance footage shows him returning to the smoke shop where he worked, dropping the bloody knife in the cashier’s booth, ringing up a customer and then fleeing in a car with his friends.
During cross examinations, Popov’s defense attorney cast doubt on his client’s role as an instigator. He questioned whether Popov was the one yelling the slurs and also pressed Sibley’s friends on why they continued to engage and walk toward him. Pollard asked the eyewitnesses whether they could read Popov’s mind and know how he was feeling that night. He suggested “emotions were high” and that the situation escalated quickly.
Sibley’s friends said Popov was the one who wouldn’t leave them alone and took out a knife when they were all unarmed. After Sibley was stabbed, surveillance footage shows him slowly sitting on the ground, then lying back, stretching out his arms and legs. Blood spilled down his shorts and pooled around him on the sidewalk as Pena squatted beside him, telling him to calm down, according to police body camera footage. Pena testified that he was applying pressure to Sibley’s wound to try to slow the bleeding.
As the video played, one of Sibley’s supporters in the audience burst into tears and left the courtroom. On the witness stand, Pena wiped his eyes with a tissue.
Before Pena fully realized what had happened, he said, he remembered his friend “just giving me this look.”
“At that point I knew that something was wrong,” he said.
