Sakia Gunn was a 15-year-old, African American lesbian that was murdered on May 11, 2003 when she was involved in a hate crime while catching the New Jersey transit. Her and her friends were partying at a nightclub in downtown Manhatten. When they left the club, they waited for the bus in Newark where they were prepositioned by two guys. When the girls told them they were lesbian the guys attacked. One of the guys, who was identified to be Richard McCullough, stabbed Gunn in the chest and fled away. Once her friends took her to the hospital, Gunn died. McCullough eventually turned himself in and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
This story became so controversial because it didn't get as much media coverage as it should. It was compated to the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepherd who his killers hung him like a scarecrow because he was gay. Shepherd had gotten 659 articles written about him vs 21 articles written about Gunn. It showed that the media doesn't aknowledge those who come from a lower class community because they feel it brings low ratings to news coverages. Sakia Gunn falled in all the categories that is constantly ignored because she was black, gay, and poor which is no excuse to not to do a coverage on. Since her death there has been musicals and projects done about her story including the video above. It represents gays everywhere that suffer from bullying and to bring awareness to stopping hate crimes. The video below is a short film about what it would be like if the world was heterophobic. The film was posted a couple of weeks ago on worldstarhiphop.com and it was very nicely done. It's pretty long, but insightful.
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