While lying on the floor of the subway with a stranger’s arm around his neck, Jordan Neely reached out to a bystander and tapped his leg, a video of the manslaughter trial surrounding Neely’s death revealed Monday.
The bystander leaned toward Neely, who made an urgent gesture with his right hand for about 15 seconds. Then a third person, who was already holding Neely’s left arm, grabbed his right arm and folded it over his chest.
All this time, Marine veteran Daniel Penny continued to grab Neely by the neck from behind for more than three minutes as Neely attempted to roll free, briefly releasing his left arm and swinging his leg until his movement slowed and then stopped.
As the video played on large screens in the courtroom, Neely’s father held his head in his hands and quietly stepped out of the room.
The video – a longer version of a clip seen widely on social media – and footage from another bystander gave the anonymous jury their first direct look at the chokehold at the center of Penny’s manslaughter trial. A third witness told jurors Monday that Penny appeared to be in a trance as he restrained Neely that day in 2023.
The videos also gave the public a deeper understanding of an encounter that has sparked protests and political debate about the line between self-defense and willfulness and how race, homelessness, mental illness and drug use play a role. Neely was black; Penny is white.
Prosecutors say Penny, 25, recklessly killed Neely, who had scared passengers on the train with angry statements that some passengers found threatening.
Penny has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers say he was defending himself and his fellow passengers, acting in one of those volatile moments that New York straphangers fear but most avoid confrontation.
Neely, 30, known to some subway passengers for impersonating Michael Jackson, had mental health and drug problems. His family has said his life fell apart after his mother was murdered when he was a teenager and he testified at the trial that led to her boyfriend’s conviction.
The trial of Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran accused of killing Jordan Neely on the subway, began Friday, with jurors seeing police bodycam video of the moments officers arrived on the scene. Erica Byfield of NBC New York reports this.
He crossed paths with Penny — an architecture student who had served in the Marines for four years — on a subway train on May 1, 2023.
Neely was homeless, broke, hungry, thirsty and so desperate that he was willing to go to jail. He shouted at passengers who later recalled his statements to police.
He made high school student Ivette Rosario so nervous she thought she was going to faint, she testified Monday. She had seen outbursts on the subway before, “but not like that,” she said.
“Because of the tone, I got quite scared, and I got scared of what was being said,” Rosario said. She told jurors that Neely yelled in “an angry tone, like you’ve had enough.”
She said she looked down, hoping the train would reach a station before anything else happened.
Then she heard the sound of someone falling and looked up to see Neely on the ground with Penny’s arm around his neck.
The train soon stopped and she got off, but continued to watch from the platform. She would soon make one of the first 911 calls about what was going on. But first, her shaking hand pressed down on her phone.
She captured a video — which was seen publicly in court for the first time on Monday — of Penny on the ground, grabbing Neely’s head in the crook of his left arm, with his right hand on top of Neely’s head. In the clip, an unseen bystander worries out loud that Neely is dying and shouts, “Let him go!”
Jury selection was underway Monday in the trial of Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran accused of putting Jordan Neely in a fatal chokehold on a subway train last year. Rana Novini of NBC New York reports this.
Mexican freelance journalist Juan Alberto Vázquez made the other video that the jurors saw on Monday. That recording captured another off-camera bystander named Larry Goodson expressing concern for Neely’s life and saying he should be released if he shows certain physical reactions.
Penny did not respond, Goodson testified Monday: “He was in a completely different trance.”
Vázquez posted part of the video on social media last year, but at first he cut out about a minute in the beginning when there wasn’t much movement, he testified Monday. The full version, including Neely’s taps and gestures, was shown in court.
Goodson, Rosario and Vázquez said they did not see Neely approach anyone.
According to the defense, Neely stumbled toward a woman with a stroller and said he “will kill,” and Penny felt he should take action.
Prosecutors do not allege that Penny intended to kill, nor do they blame him for initially deciding to try to stop Neely’s threatening behavior. But they say Penny went overboard, strangling the man for about six minutes, even after passengers were able to leave the train, after others helped restrain Neely, and after he stopped moving for nearly a minute.
Neely family attorney Donte Mills claims that whatever he said didn’t justify what Penny did. Mills declined to comment after court Monday.
Defense attorneys say Penny continued to hold onto Neely because he sometimes tried to break free. Prosecutors have said Neely fought to survive.
The defense also disputes medical examiners’ finding that the chokehold killed Neely.