A Manhattan grand jury has indicted Daniel Penny, the 24-year-old Marine Corps veteran who held Jordan Neely in a chokehold on the New York City subway last month. Neely died while held by Penny.
Prosecutors charged Penny with second-degree manslaughter in connection with the incident. The grand jury, impaneled by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, had to indict Penny before he could be tried on the manslaughter charge.
Neely, who had a history of mental illness, was throwing garbage on the F train on May 1 and yelling that he wanted to die or go to jail because he was tired of having no food when Penny placed him in a chokehold.
Penny said in a video released by his lawyers earlier this week that he “just couldn’t sit still” as Neely threatened to kill people on the train and that he restrained Neely to prevent him from “being able to carry out the threats.”
Penny also said he wasn’t “trying to choke him to death” and dismissed reports that he held Neely in a chokehold for 15 minutes.
He recalled feeling intimidated by Neely. Despite Penny standing at 6-foot-2, Neely was bigger than him and was shouting in “terrified” passengers’ faces, Penny said.
“There’s a common misconception that Marines don’t get scared. We’re actually taught one of our core values is courage, and courage is not the absence of fear but how you handle fear,” he said. “I was scared for myself, but I looked around there was women and children, he was yelling in their faces saying these threats. I just couldn’t sit still.”
A three-and-a-half-minute video captured by a witness begins with Neely in a chokehold. Shortly after, a second rider pins down Neely’s arms. Thirty seconds into the video, Neely flails his arms and tries to escape Penny’s grasp. Then the third man enters to help pin Neely to the floor.
More than two minutes into the video, Neely begins going limp. Another witness can be heard off camera telling Penny, “You’re going to kill him now, he’s defecated on himself.” One of the men restraining Neely said it was an old stain on his pants and that Neely was not “squeezing.”
“He’s not squeezing? All right. You’ve got to let him go. After he’s defecated himself that’s it,” the off-camera witness said.
The man holding Neely’s arms down then let go and asked Neely if he could hear him. When Neely failed to respond, Penny released him. Seconds later, Penny and the other man moved Neely into a recovery position. After three minutes and 45 seconds of video, Neely’s body contorted, and let out a deep breath. The witness who recorded the footage later said, “None of us who were there thought he was in danger of dying. We thought he just passed out or ran out of air.”
The city medical examiner ruled the death a homicide caused by “compression of neck (chokehold).”
A minority woman who was on the train during the incident previously told Fox News she believed it was “self-defense” and that “I believe in my heart that he saved a lot of people that day.”
“I don’t believe that I’m a hero, but she was one of those people I was trying to protect, who were all scared,” Penny said.
Neely struggled with mental health issues, including schizophrenia, PTSD, and depression, according to his aunt. He had been arrested 42 times, including four times for assault. At the time of his death, Neely had an active warrant for allegedly assaulting a 67-year-old woman in 2021.
Neely was arrested in August 2015 for attempted kidnapping “after he was seen dragging a 7-year-old girl down an Inwood street,” the New York Daily News reported. He pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child and was sentenced to four months in jail. He was later arrested again in June 2019 for punching a 64-year-old man in the face during a fight in a Greenwich Village subway station, the report adds.
Reddit posts unearthed by journalist Andy Ngo show that subway riders had grown to fear Neely starting nine years ago because of erratic, violent behavior. He was also on an NYC Department of Homeless Services list of homeless people who had dire needs, the “Top 50” list, according to the New York Times.