Teenage Girl Fatally Stabbed at a Bus Stop in Newark
By RONALD SMOTHERS
NewYork Times.
May 12th

NEWARK, May 12 — A 15-year-old girl returning with four friends from a party in Manhattan was fatally stabbed at a bus stop here early Sunday morning during a scuffle with two men whose advances the girls rebuffed, the police said today.

The Newark police said they were treating the incident as a bias crime. They said witnesses reported that one of the girls had told the men they were not interested in them because the girls were gay.

Under New Jersey law, stiffer penalties would result from a felony murder committed because of the victim's sexual orientation, said Lt. Derek Glenn, a spokesman for the Newark Police Department. He added that the police, in consultation with the Essex County prosecutor's office, had determined that there was reason to pursue the investigation with this possibility in mind.

The police have "good leads" but have made no arrests, Lieutenant Glenn said. No one else was injured.

The stabbing victim was identified as Sakia Gunn, a 10th grader at Newark's West Side High School. She lived in the city's far western Vailsburg section with her grandmother, Thelma Gunn, who was her legal guardian, and her mother, Latona Gunn.

Latona Gunn, asked about the possible bias motive in the crime that took her daughter's life, said: "I won't know what kind of crime this is until I talk to the guy who did it and he tells me. All I know is that my child is gone now."

Lieutenant Glenn said the five girls had returned from a party by train and had walked two blocks from Newark's Pennsylvania Station to Market and Broad Streets, where a number of bus routes intersect. While waiting at a bus stop there about 3:30 a.m., they were approached by two men in a car who made advances. The two men got out of the car and a shoving match began among them and the girls, who ranged from 15 to 17.

The scuffle escalated, the police spokesman said, and at one point one girl said they were not interested in the men because they were gay. Lieutenant Glenn said that there was no indication so far that the statement was delivered in a taunting or challenging way. But the struggle did grow more intense, he said, until Ms. Gunn was stabbed in the chest with a knife by one of the men.

The two men, according to the police, then got back into their car and fled west up Market Street while Ms. Gunn's friends flagged down a passing car, which drove her to University Hospital less than half a mile away. She was pronounced dead there a short time later.

Her mother described Sakia as a "friendly and loving" child who loved basketball and played guard on the West Side High team until low grades led school officials to remove her temporarily from the team. But her goal was to bring her grades up and return to the team, her mother said, because her dream was to play in the Women's National Basketball Association.