A white man who fatally stabbed a gay Black dancer at a Brooklyn gas station in 2023 was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday, ending a hate-crime case that shocked the city’s L.G.B.T.Q. community.
The man, Dmitriy Popov, was 17 years old when he plunged a five-and-a-half-inch blade into the chest of the dancer, O’Shae Sibley.
The attack happened after Mr. Popov and a group of his friends began yelling racist and homophobic slurs at Mr. Sibley and his friends, all gay men of color who had been blasting Beyoncé while filling up a rental car with gas, prosecutors said during Mr. Popov’s trial, which ended in June.
Mr. Popov, who testified during the trial, had claimed self-defense, arguing that Mr. Sibley rushed at him after he pulled out his knife. But a jury convicted him of manslaughter as a hate crime, which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years. The jury acquitted him of the most serious charges against him, including murder in the second degree as a hate crime.
On Thursday, Mr. Popov, now 20, stood up in a packed courtroom in Brooklyn Supreme Court and turned to where dozens of relatives and friends of Mr. Sibley were sitting.
“I never wanted to kill anybody,” he said, describing his fatal encounter with Mr. Sibley as an “unfortunate situation.” He added, “I would want everybody to know that this had nothing to do with race or with sexuality.”
“I wish I could take it back,” Mr. Popov said. “I just ask for forgiveness from the family, the friends and his loved ones.”
His apology came after Mr. Sibley’s relatives and friends spoke at the hearing, describing the way that his death had changed them.
Otis Pena, who was with Mr. Sibley the night he was killed, said he is plagued by “night terrors” and takes medication for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Joshua Sanchez, who was also there, said he now walks through the city afraid someone might attack him because he is gay.
The day of the killing, July 29, 2023, Mr. Sibley and four of his friends had been at a beach in New Jersey and stopped at the Mobil gas station on their way back home.
Surveillance footage showed Mr. Sibley, bare-chested and in pink swim trunks, leaning against a column, eating sunflower seeds and, at one point, raising one leg gracefully as Beyoncé played from the car. His friend, Mr. Pena, shimmied up and down the parking lot, laughing. Moments later, Mr. Popov and his friends came out of the gas station store and began mocking them.
In court on Thursday, Mr. Sanchez looked at Mr. Popov and said he had taken away a “brotherhood” of friends who once moved through New York freely, but now live in fear.
“We didn’t go to that gas station being hateful,” Mr. Sanchez said. “We came with joy and happiness, and he ruined it because he wanted to.”
Mr. Sibley, one of 11 siblings, grew up in Philadelphia and came to New York with dreams of dancing professionally.
“Being true to himself should have been an inspiration,” his sister Dezirah Kelly, 30, said. “It should have inspired other people to be happy, not to inflict harm.”
Mr. Popov’s lawyer, Mark Pollard, argued that his client was too young to act reasonably in the moment, citing research that says the brain is not fully developed until age 25.
On Thursday, he asked Justice Dena Douglas to sentence Mr. Popov as a youthful offender instead of as an adult. Under the youthful offender status, people cannot be incarcerated for more than four years and can have their criminal records sealed.
Mr. Popov, who was ordered held without bail after his arrest in August 2023, would have served only one more year if Justice Douglas had agreed to charge him as a youthful offender.
Instead, she chose a sentence much closer to the one proposed by prosecutors, who had asked for 25 years. Justice Douglas did not explain her decision, but Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, said the sentence was just and showed that Mr. Sibley’s life mattered.
“I hope that young man who took his life will spend the next 20 years thinking about what he did to the people of Brooklyn, to the people of New York City and really to the people of this country,” Mr. Gonzalez said.
Mr. Sibley’s mother, Onetha Sibley, said she had decided long ago to forgive Mr. Popov.
“I hated that child, but deep down I had to forgive,” she said. “Soon as I did, I started eating. I started sleeping. I felt better. I just hope he gets his life right.”
Mr. Popov’s mother, who identified herself only by her first name, Svetlana, said her son is not racist or homophobic.
“When you’re 17, you don’t know what you’re doing,” she said after the sentencing.