Global Courant 2023-05-18 14:00:42
EXCLUSIVE DETAILS – A retiree who earlier this month witnessed Marine veteran Daniel Penny fatally strangling a freakish homeless person on a train called him a hero and berated Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg for prosecuting him.
“He’s a hero,” said the passenger, who has lived in New York City for more than 50 years.
The witness, who described herself as a woman of color, said it was wrong for Bragg to charge Penny with second degree manslaughter.
“It was self-defense and I believe in my heart that he saved a lot of people that day that could have been hurt,” she told Fox News Digital.
KID ROCK TOP DONOR OF DANIEL PENNY’S DEFENSE IN NYC SUBWAY CHOKEHOLD DEATH
Daniel Penny leaves the NYPD’s 5th Precinct on Friday, May 12, 2023. Penny is being charged with the death of subway driver Jordan Neely. (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital)
Jordan Neely, 30, who suffered from mental illness, stormed onto the northbound F train at about 2:30 p.m. May 1, yelling and threatening passengers, she said.
“I’m on a train reading my book, and suddenly I hear someone spewing this rhetoric. He said, ‘I don’t care if I have to kill an F, I will. I’m going to jail, I’ll take a bullet care,” the woman, who is in her sixties, remembers.
The terrified passengers thronged to the exit doors.
“I look at where we are on the subway, in the sardine can, and I’m like, ‘Okay, we’re in between stations. We have nowhere to go,'” she said. “The people on that train, we were afraid. We were afraid for lives.”
A screenshot of a bystander video showing Jordan Neely being held in a stranglehold on the New York City subway. (Luces de Nueva York/Juan Alberto Vazquez via Storyful)
Penny intervened when Neely started using the word “kill” and “bullet.”
“Why on earth would you take a bullet? Why? You don’t take a bullet for snatching something from someone’s hand. You take a bullet for violence,” she added.
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The witness said it was clear to her that Penny waited until the last minute to intervene in the interests of his fellow passengers.
She heard a thump as he dragged Neely to the ground, but she couldn’t see properly until the Broadway-Lafayette station doors opened and most of the passengers disembarked.
Marine veteran Daniel Penny, right, is said to have fatally strangled Jordan Neely, left, on a New York subway after the homeless man threatened passengers. (Mills & Edwards/All Trails)
The witness waited for the police to arrive and gave a statement.
“Mr. Penny took care of people. That’s what he did. That’s his crime,” she told Fox News Digital. After the altercation, she and at least three other passengers thanked him.
But he seemed shocked, the woman said.
“No one wants to kill anyone. Mr. Penny didn’t want to kill that man,’ she said. “You should have seen what Mr. Penny looked like. He was distraught. He was very, very, very visibly upset. And he didn’t go. He didn’t run. He stayed.’
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said during Penny’s arraignment Friday that the Navy veteran, who has lived in the New York area all his life, held Neely for another “period” after the man stopped moving.
A screenshot of a bystander video showing Jordan Neely being held in a stranglehold on the New York City subway. (Luces de Nueva York/Juan Alberto Vazquez via Storyful)
But Penny, he noted, had stayed on the train and accompanied the police to the police station to voluntarily answer questions.
Two men, who have not been publicly identified, helped hold Neely’s arms during the altercation.
“It took three men to hold Mr. Neely. He was having a hard time,” the witness said.
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After widespread protests erupted across the city, with many protesters and even politicians calling Penny a “murderer,” Bragg sued Penny.
Freelance journalist Alberto Vazquez began recording the confrontation after Neely was already in a chokehold and offered a second account of the homeless man’s behavior.
Alvin Bragg filed a manslaughter charge against Daniel Penny in the death of Jordan Neely, right, on the subway on May 1, 2023. (Alex Kent via Getty/Paul Martinka)
“He started yelling in an aggressive way,” Vazquez said the New York Post. “He said he had no food and drink, he was tired and he doesn’t care if he goes to jail. He started screaming all those things, took off his coat, a black coat that he had, and threw that road. on the ground.”
The story that has emerged is about race — a white man fatally asphyxiating a black man, the witness said.
“This isn’t about race. This is about people of all colors being very, very scared and a man stepping in to help them,” she said. “Race is used to divide us.”
The retiree lived in the city in the 1980s and 1990s, when violent crime peaked during the crack epidemic.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani took office in 1994 and is widely credited with cleaning up the Big Apple with a zero-tolerance approach to crime.
Daniel Penny leaves the NYPD’s 5th Precinct on Friday, May 12, 2023. Penny is being charged with the death of subway driver Jordan Neely. (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital)
The witness said she feels the city is slipping backwards with failed policies that fail to help the mentally ill and criminal justice reforms that fail to hold those who commit crimes accountable.
“I miss the city under Giuliani’s law and order,” she told Fox News Digital. “When it comes to exposing people or subjecting them to violent behavior, the people in power who are supposed to protect us are not.”
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She added that she prays for Penny every day and is thrilled that his legal defense fund has raised more than $2.5 million.
“I hope they raise more because it’s going to cost a pretty penny, no pun intended, to bring justice to this young man,” she said.
This undated photo, provided by Mills & Edwards, LLP, in New York, Friday, May 12, 2023, shows Jordan Neely, left, with Carolyn Neely, an aunt. (Courtesy of Mills & Edwards, LLP via AP)
She denounced politicians and people who “jump up and down and feel all this poison” towards Penny.
“There was an AOC that said this gentleman was lynched. Why would she do that? She should be for all people,” the woman wondered, referring to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
She also expressed sympathy for Neely, who clearly lived a tragic life and suffered from mental illness.
His mother was strangled and her body dumped in a suitcase in the Bronx when he was a teenager. Neely had been arrested more than 40 times, including for numerous violent assaults on strangers on the subway.
In 2021, he punched a 67-year-old woman in the face, breaking her nose and eye socket.
He has cycled in and out of hospitals and prisons throughout his adult life and was on the city’s “Top 50” list of homeless people most in need of help.
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The problems facing New York City are now plaguing the US, the witness noted.
“It’s not looking too good for us,” she said. “You know, we were supposed to be an example to other nations, but we’re turning into a third world country.”
Penny, who is free on $100,000 bail, is due to appear in court on July 17.
Rebecca Rosenberg is an accomplished journalist and author of books with a focus on crime and criminal justice. Email tips to [email protected] and @ReRosenberg.
