Jordan Neely, the homeless man strangled to death on the subway last week, was reportedly listed on a city roster of people on the streets who desperately needed help.
Referred to colloquially as the “Top 50” list, the internal catalogue held by the city’s Department of Homeless Services details which people are cycling in and out of homeless shelters and mental health treatment centers, a source told The Post Monday.
The agency and its non-profit service providers flag cases that need close attention, which helps them keep track of those in dire need of assistance.
“There’s a group of folks that providers are concerned about, and there’s frequent conferencing related to that material,” the source said.
Neely — a 30-year-old former street performer who died last Monday after former Marine Daniel Penny, 24, put him in a chokehold — was on that list, according to CNN and The New York Times.
He’d been taken to hospitals several times, the Times said. Sometimes the trips were voluntary, other times not.
Police and eyewitnesses said Neely was yelling at subway riders and throwing trash on an F train in Manhattan May 1 before Penny tied him up with a well-known grappling technique called a rear naked choke.
“He started screaming in an aggressive manner,” one witness, Juan Alberto Vazquez, recalled to The Post.
“He said he had no food, he had no drink, that he was tired and doesn’t care if he goes to jail,” Vazquez said, adding that Neely pulled off his black jacket and threw it to the ground, prompting subway riders to retreat to the far end of the car.
The city medical examiner has ruled Neely’s death a homicide. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is investigating and sources said prosecutors will impanel a grand jury to determine whether Penny should be charged with a crime.
Penny’s legal team is arguing that their client acted in self-defense — Neely was threatening him and the other passengers, his attorneys said, and Penny never intended to harm him.
Neely — who sank into a deep depression after his stepfather brutally murdered his mom in 2007 — had a lengthy history of mental illness that his family said was never treated correctly.
He also had a plethora of run-ins with the cops, although there was no way for Penny to know that at the time. And his frequent outbursts of random violence led to at least one lengthy stay in jail.
Neely randomly punched Anne Mitcheltree in June 2021 inside the S.K. Deli Market on 2nd Avenue in the East Village, which left the 65-year-old woman with swelling and substantial pain.
“They told me we have him, he’s in custody, we’re going to press charges,” Mitcheltree, a creative arts therapist with New York City Health + Hospitals for over 40 years, told The Post.
“I thought the judge would have forced him to take psychiatric meds, but it seems like he bounced out.”
A few months later, he belted a 67-year-old woman in the East Village, police sources said.
The November attack knocked the woman over and left her with a broken nose, fractured orbital bone and bruising, swelling and substantial pain, according to charging documents.
The assault landed Neely in Rikers Island for more than a year.
In total, he had more than 40 arrests on his long rap sheet and about 43 calls for an “aided case,” which means someone is sick, injured or mentally ill, sources said.