Just before Daniel Penny placed Jordan Neely in a chokehold following Neely’s alleged threats against passengers, Neely raised his fists in the air, a witness testified on Thursday.
Neely died following the chokehold, and Penny, a 26-year-old former Marine, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of manslaughter or up to 4 years if he’s convicted on the lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide.
On Thursday, 18-year-old Moriela Sanchez testified that Neely, 30, began threatening passengers as soon as he entered the New York City subway car on May 1, 2023, Fox News reported.
“If no one gives him water or food, he’s gonna start putting hands on people,” Sanchez testified. “He was going to start attacking.”
Sanchez explained that Neely was shouting at everyone in the car, but he did not touch anyone.
“After that, Penny started putting his hands around his neck – and after that he dropped him down so he was closed off from attacking people,” Sanchez added. “Penny dropped down on his back, and Jordan was on top of him.”
Sanchez testified that she believed Penny put Neely in the chokehold to stop him from attacking other passengers.
Sanchez also said that she called 911 when the subway stopped, and that a black man wearing a hat helped Penny hold down Neely.
When Penny’s defense cross-examined her, Sanchez said she was relieved when Penny took action against Neely, but contradicted her former grand jury testimony on Thursday by saying it looked like Penny squeezed Neely’s neck. She previously said it didn’t look like that.
Another witness, Kaydren Schrunk, said Neely was shouting in the middle of the train car, made threatening gestures, smelled like “soiled sweatpants,” and that she feared he had a gun or knife, even though she didn’t see one.
She also testified that Neely made threatening comments toward the passengers.
“This was the first time in my life that I took a moment because I was scared that I was going to die in that moment,” she said.
She said that Penny stepped in “at the highest level of the outburst,” and that his arm was across Neely’s chest while two other men helped hold down Neely.
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Another witness, Johnny Grima, claimed Penny was “flinging Neely’s limbs around carelessly” after releasing him from the chokehold. Grima, who lied on the stand about a previous conviction for assault, Fox reported, disparaged Penny during his testimony.
“I already had feelings for him. I didn’t like him,” Grima said, according to Newsweek. “It’s kind of like, you know, when you have, like, an abuser is abusing someone, and they don’t try to get anyone to the abused?”
In the opening days of the trial, law enforcement said Neely was alive when first responders arrived at the scene, but they did not give Neely mouth-to-mouth because an NYPD sergeant was worried about what diseases he may have been carrying, The Daily Wire reported.
“He was an apparent drug user and he was very dirty,” NYPD Sgt. Carl Johnson testified, according to the New York Post. “I didn’t want my officers to put their lips on his mouth. They could get hepatitis or AIDS … chest compressions would be enough to get him awake.”
