Sakia Gunn (May 26, 1987-May 11, 2003) was a 15-year old African American lesbian who was murdered in a hate crime in Newark, New Jersey. On the night of May 11th, Gunn was returning from a night out in Greenwich Village, Manhattan with her friends. While waiting for a bus at the corner of Broad and Market Streets in downtown Newark, Gunn and her friends were propositioned by two men. When the girls turned them down, by declaring themselves to be lesbians, the men attacked them. Gunn fought back, and one of the men, Richard McCullough, stabbed her. McCullough, who turned himself in to authorities several days later, was arrested in connection with the crime on May 16, and the murder is being prosecuted as a hate crime.

The murder set off several protests in working-class Newark, and more than 2,500 people were reported to have attended Gunn's funeral.

In comparison to the 1998 gay-bias murder of Matthew Shepard, Sakia Gunn's murder drew limited media coverage. Using the Lexis-Nexis database, a professor at The College of New Jersey found that there were 659 stories in major newspapers about Shepard's murder, compared to only 21 articles about Gunn's murder in the seven month period after their attacks. This professor also notes 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 even be indicted. It has been suggested that the reason for this disparity is due to race, class, and sex. Shepard was a well-to-do white man who happened to be gay, and was murdered by white men, while Gunn was a working-class, African American lesbian, who was murdered by another African American.

Editors of a popular internet journal argued that there were "fundamental errors in the way most journalists reported the brutal May 11 murder of Sakia Gunn." They cite the tendency for reporters to highlight the "scuffle" that occurred between Gunn and her murderer, with the implication being that if Gunn and her friends had not only announced their sexual orientation, the men would have left them alone. The authors of the journal argue that it is "far more likely that the men only propositioned Gunn and her friends because they knew the girls were dykes, and a sexual advance would provoke some kind of exchange."

Gunn's death sparked outrage from the city's gay and lesbian community. The community, in conjunction with GLAAD, rallied the mayor's office. Among the requests of the mayor include the establishment of a gay and lesbian community center, police officers to patrol the Newark Penn Station/Broad Street corridor 24-hours a day, the creation of a LGBT 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.

Incidentally, at the corner of Broad and Market Streets where Gunn and her friends were waiting for the bus, stands a police booth that is to be manned 24 hours a day, as was promised by Sharpe James in his 2002 campaign against Cory Booker. The fact that there was not a police officer in the booth at that time raised a number of questions among Gunn's family and friends, as well as the Newark community as a whole. If the booth had been manned, Gunn may not have died that night.

External links

• She didn't have to die