A former US Marine who choked Jordan Neely to death on a New York City subway car has been identified as 24-year-old Daniel James Penny.
Neely’s death was ruled by the New York medical examiner’s office as a homicide due to compression against his neck. Video footage and eyewitness accounts show a man believed to be Mr Penny with his arm wrapped around Neely for several minutes until his eyes shut and body goes limp.
New York City Police Department officers attempted CPR upon arrival on the F train at the Broadway-Lafayette platform in Manhattan on 1 May, according to an incident report reviewed by The Independent. Neely was pronounced dead at Lenox Health Greenwich Village hospital.
In a statement shared with The Independent at 7.30pm on 5 May, attorneys for Mr Penny said that when Neely “began aggressively threatening Daniel Penny and the other passengers, Daniel, with the help of others, acted to protect themselves, until help arrived.”
“Daniel never intended to harm Mr Neely and could not have foreseen his untimely death,” the statement added. “For too long, those suffering from mental illness have been treated with indifference. We hope that out of this awful tragedy will come a new commitment by our elected officials to address the mental health crisis on our streets and subways.”
The Independent and other news outlets confirmed Mr Penny’s identity earlier on 5 May after online sleuths first discovered his name the previous night. Several news outlets, including The New York Post and The New York Daily News, reported attempts to reach him for comment earlier in the week or published details about his military history, but withheld his name from the public.
Neely’s previous criminal record and family history were widely published across the tabloids and mainstream news outlets.
A spokesperson for the NYPD could not provide comment or identify the person in the video to The Independent; police are not able to disclose a person’s identity unless they are wanted or in custody.
Widely shared video footage captured by journalist Juan Alberto Vazquez shows a man believed to be Mr Penny and two other men holding Neely to the floor of a train car on 1 May.
Police initially questioned but did not arrest Mr Penny. He has not been charged with a crime.
Mr Penny has provided his version of events to investigators, according to ABC News.
He also has retained legal representation from attorneys with the firm Raiser and Kenniff, whose founding partners were both in the armed services.
Thomas Kenniff unsuccessfully ran for Manhattan district attorney as a Republican in 2021, ultimately losing to Alvin Bragg, who received more than 82 per cent of the vote.
According to US Marine Corps records and a LinkedIn profile, Mr Penny joined the Marines in 2017 after graduating from West Islip High School, a hamlet roughly 36 miles outside of Manhattan in Suffolk County.
Public records confirm Mr Penny’s former address at Marine Corps Base Camp LeJeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina. He served as an infantryman and a sergeant.
He left the Marines in 2021. He wrote in a service industry job site that his military experience helped him discover that he is “passionate” about “helping, communicating, and connecting to different people from all over the world.”
Photographs on a profile on the hiking website All Trails that appears to belong to Mr Penny also how his visits to trails across New England, Hawaii, Honduras, and North Carolina.
When he walked into a subway car on 1 May, Neely – a street performer who was experiencing homelessness – was complaining of hunger and thirst, according to Mr Vazquez, who posted a video of part of the incident on his Facebook page.
He wrote that Neely was yelling and said he was tired, didn’t care whether he went to prison, and was ready to die. He said Neely threw his jacket to the floor of the train car before another passenger grabbed him in a headlock. Others grabbed at his arms.
In bystander video from inside the train car, a passenger can be heard warning the man holding Neely in a chokehold.
“You don’t want to catch a murder charge,” a man can be heard saying. “You got a hell of a chokehold, man.”
