Sakia Gunn (May 26, 1987 – May 11, 2003) was a 15-year-old

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

lesbian who was murdered in what has been deemed a hate crime in

Newark, New Jersey Newark ( , ) is the List of municipalities in New Jersey, most populous City (New Jersey), city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the county seat, seat of Essex County, New Jersey, Essex County and the second largest city within the New Yo ...

. Richard McCullough, was charged with her death and sentenced to 20 years in prison.Kleinknecht, William. "Lesbian Teen's Family Confronts Killer", ''

The Star-Ledger ''The Star-Ledger'' is the largest circulated newspaper in the U.S. state of New Jersey and is based in Newark. It is a sister paper to '' The Jersey Journal'' of Jersey City, ''The Times'' of Trenton and the ''Staten Island Advance'', all of w ...

'', April 22, 2005. In 2008 a documentary was released about Gunn's murder, titled ''Dreams Deferred: The Sakia Gunn Film Project''.

The murder

On the night of May 11, 2003, Gunn was returning from a night out in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the List of co ...

, with her friends. While waiting for the #1

New Jersey Transit New Jersey Transit Corporation, branded as NJ Transit, and often shortened to NJT, is a state-owned public transportation system that serves the U.S. state of New Jersey, along with portions of New York State and Pennsylvania. It operates bus, ...

bus at the corner of Broad and Market Streets in downtown Newark, Gunn and her friends were propositioned by two men. The girls rejected their advances and declared themselves to be lesbians. The men attacked; Gunn fought back, and one of the men, Richard McCullough, stabbed her in the chest. Both men immediately fled the scene in their vehicle. After one of Gunn's friends flagged down a passing driver, she was taken to nearby University Hospital, where she died.Meenan, Mick. "Newark Schools Drop the Ball", '' Gay City News'', May 30-June 5, 2003.

Sentencing

McCullough, who turned himself in to authorities several days later, was arrested in connection with the crime on May 16, 2003. In a

plea bargain A plea bargain (also plea agreement or plea deal) is an agreement in criminal law proceedings, whereby the prosecutor provides a concession to the defendant in exchange for a plea of guilt or '' nolo contendere.'' This may mean that the defend ...

, the murder charges were dropped and, on March 3, 2005, McCullough pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter, aggravated assault, and bias intimidation, claiming, at one point, that Gunn died after she "ran into his knife". On April 21, 2005, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Reaction

Gunn's death was the subject of a two-day series in the

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large na ...

in October 2004 by

Anne Hull Anne Hull (born June 8, 1961) is an American journalist and writer. She was a national correspondent for the Washington Post for nearly two decades, writing about immigration, minimum wage workers, the Bible Belt and U.S. soldiers coming home fro ...

, who spent months reporting on the lives of young lesbians in Newark in the aftermath of the hate crime that killed their friend. The series was finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing in 2005. Using the

LexisNexis LexisNexis is a part of the RELX corporation that sells data analytics products and various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper search, and consumer info ...

database, Kim Pearson, a professor at

The College of New Jersey The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) is a public university in Ewing Township, New Jersey. It is part of New Jersey's public system of higher education. Established in 1855 as the New Jersey State Normal School, TCNJ was the first normal school, or ...

compared the media coverage of Sakia Gunn's death to the 1998 murder of

Matthew Shepard Matthew Wayne Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998) was a gay American student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten, tortured, and left to die near Laramie on the night of October 6, 1998. He was taken by rescuers to ...

: 659 stories were found in major newspapers about Shepard's murder, compared to 21 articles about Gunn's murder in the subsequent seven months. Pearson noted that not only were Shepard's attackers tried and convicted during this period, but that it took nearly that long for Gunn's attacker to be indicted. Gunn's death sparked outrage from the city's gay and lesbian community. The community, in conjunction with

GLAAD GLAAD (), an acronym of Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, is an American non-governmental media monitoring organization originally founded as a protest against defamatory coverage of gay and lesbian demographics and their portraya ...

, rallied the mayor's office, requesting, among other things, the establishment of a gay and lesbian community center, that police officers to patrol the Newark Penn Station/Broad Street corridor 24-hours a day, the creation of a

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term i ...

advisory council to the mayor, and that the school board be held accountable for the lack of concern and compassion when dealing with students at Westside High School (which Gunn attended) immediately following the murder. The Newark Pride Alliance, an

advocacy group, was founded in the wake of Gunn's murder.
Newark Pride Alliance (archived via webcitation.org), geocities.com
accessed November 21, 2014.

References

External links

by Keith Boykin

by Keith Boykin

The Sakia Gunn Film Project
* The poe
"The Other Black Man"
by T. Miller references Sakia Gunn {{DEFAULTSORT:Gunn, Sakia 1987 births 2003 deaths 2003 in LGBT history 2003 in New Jersey 2003 murders in the United States 20th-century LGBT people 21st century in Newark, New Jersey American victims of anti-LGBT hate crimes Deaths by stabbing in the United States Female murder victims History of Newark, New Jersey History of women in New Jersey Lesbians Lesbophobic violence LGBT African Americans LGBT history in New Jersey LGBT people from New Jersey May 2003 events in the United States Murdered African-American people People murdered in New Jersey