Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran who choked and killed Jordan Neely, a homeless man, on the subway last week, surrendered Friday to face a charge of second-degree manslaughter.
Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran who choked and killed Jordan Neely, a homeless man, on the subway last week, surrendered Friday to face a charge of second-degree manslaughter.
Penny, 24, dressed in a dark gray suit, walked through the front doors of the Police Department’s 5th Precinct at around 8 a.m. Hands cuffed behind his back, Penny was led out of the precinct at 10:38 a.m. He was put into a waiting black police car to be taken to Manhattan Criminal Court, where he was to be arraigned later Friday.
Penny encountered Neely, 30, on an F train on May 1 and held him in a chokehold for several minutes, killing him. Witnesses said Neely, who had a history of mental illness, was acting in a “hostile and erratic manner” toward other passengers on the train, according to police, but there has been no indication that he physically attacked anyone before Penny began choking him.
The struggle was captured in a four-minute video that showed Penny continuing to choke Neely for an additional 50 seconds after Neely had stopped moving. Police interviewed Penny that night, but initially released him without charging him.
A week and a half later, on Thursday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office confirmed that it planned to charge Penny in the killing.
Penny’s lawyers, Steven M. Raiser and Thomas A. Kenniff, said in a statement that they were “confident that once all the facts and circumstances surrounding this tragic incident are brought to bear, Mr. Penny will be fully absolved of any wrongdoing.”
In the days after Neely’s killing, many city leaders, politicians and advocates for New Yorkers struggling with mental illness and homelessness had called for Penny’s immediate arrest. They said Neely’s killing highlighted the city’s failure to care for its most vulnerable and marginalized residents.
