NEW YORK (AP) -- A Brooklyn teenager convicted of fatally stabbing a man in what prosecutors initially said was an anti-gay hate crime has been sentenced to 23 years to life in prison.
Nineteen-year-old Omar Willock was sentenced Monday in the 2007 killing of Robert Duncanson. Willock was found guilty in March of second-degree murder.
A judge threw out a murder as hate crime charge after witnesses failed to support allegations that bias was the primary motivation for the attack.
Prosecutors say Willock shouted anti-gay remarks at Duncanson when they passed each other on a Crown Heights street on May 12, 2007. They say the two got into a fist fight, and that Willock pulled a knife and stabbed Duncanson four times in the back.