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Lesbian Teen's Killer Appears In Court
by Beth Shapiro
365Gay.com Newscenter
New York Bureau
May 16, 2003
6:43 p.m. ET/+5GMT/-3PT
(Newark, New Jersey) The man accused of killing 15-year old Sakia Gunn was arraigned in state Superior Court Friday, as the teen's family was preparing to bury her.
As 365Gay.com was first to report, Richard McCullough, 29, turned himself in to Newark police Thursday night (story) He's charged with murder, bias intimidation and weapons charges.
In court Friday, McCullough pleaded not guilty and was ordered held on $500,000 bail.
Sakia was stabbed in the chest early Sunday at a bus stop at the city's busiest intersection after she and her girlfriend rebuffed a man's sexual advances. The teens were returning home from a night out in New York City and waiting for a bus near the train station when a man pulled up in a white vehicle and attempted to pick them up. When they told the man they were lesbians and not interested in him a scuffle broke out, and Sakia was stabbed.
Friday, friends of the dead girl and members of the city's LGBT community said they want to see something positive come out of the tragic killing.
The Rev. Jacquelyn Holland, pastor of the Liberation in Truth Unity Fellowship Church in Newark, said she and other community leaders hope to establish a neighborhood drop-in center to be named after Sakia where gay teens can come for counseling, employment help and reassurance.
"We want to let them know it's OK to be who they are," she said. "She didn't do anything wrong by being a lesbian."
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