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Daniel Penny, the Marine facing a manslaughter charge in the subway chokehold killing of Jordan Neely, is being “railroaded,” outraged friends and family told The Post Saturday.
Loved ones are angry at the rush to judgment over Neely’s death and those who have branded Penny a “murderer” for the May 1 incident on a Manhattan subway train.
Penny was arrested and later released on $100,000 bail in the death of Neely, a homeless Michael Jackson impersonator who was allegedly acting erratically and threatening before Penny and other straphangers subdued him.
“It’s disgusting. Here’s a young man who served our country. What about the other two gentlemen on the subway who were helping him [restrain Neely]? They haven’t even been named,” said a cousin of Penny’s, Justine Baldwin.
Relatives and pals painted a picture of a “calm” and “inclusive” soul who grew up in a middle-class military family on Long Island — far from being a son of privilege, as his attackers have described him.
“Danny,” now 24, a high-school athlete who joined the Marines right after graduation, lived out of a van at one point, neighbors said.
He was a “handsome, fun kid who could always be counted on when you needed help,” the cousin said.
Penny and his three sisters grew up jammed together in a three-bedroom home in West Islip with their parents, who later divorced.
Friends recall the Penny house and Danny himself as normal and welcoming.
Videos Penny made as a young teen with local friends such as Devin Marino and Tyler Varley show a group of adolescents shooting hoops on a suburban street and running around the Smith Haven Mall in nearby Lake Grove.
“I knew those videos would pop up one day,” Marino jokingly told The Post Saturday.
