Murder or a public service gone wrong?
A very tragic story, continuing to unspool, is that of former Marine Daniel Penny and his run-in with homeless Michael Jackson impersonator Jordan Neely on a New York City subway, leaving the later deceased.
According to bystanders, Neely entered the train around 2:15 in the afternoon and began shouting that he was hungry, thirsty and had little for which to live.
As his actions grew more erratic, Penny and two others restrained him, Penny applying a choke hold that was caught on camera by an independent journalist. The 24-year-old was interviewed by police but not arrested.
Neely was pronounced dead at a local hospital by way of homicide.
Hours ago, though, Penny was officially charged with manslaughter, appearing at a Manhattan court.
His attorney told CNN, that he will be “fully absolved of any wrongdoing,” and released a statement reading, “He risked his own life and safety, for the good of his fellow passengers. The unfortunate result was the unintended and unforeseen death of Mr. Neely.”
The Neely family, on the other hand, wishes that Penny was charged with murder declaring, “We believe that the conviction should be for murder because that was intentional. At some point, when people are screaming, ‘Let him go, you’re going to kill him’… He could’ve chosen to let him go, but he didn’t. And what did he think would happen if he didn’t? He had to know he would die. He had to.”
Neely, whose rap sheet featured forty two arrests, as well as an outstanding warrant for assault, beat hell out of a sixty-five-year-old woman in a random attack at a New York deli in 2021 and a few months later left a sixty-seven-year-old woman in the East Village with “a broken nose, fractured orbital bone and bruising, swelling and substantial pain”, an assault that got him a year at Rikers.
This extremely unfortunate business is, in any case, surf related as Penny has been described by all media outlets as “an avid surfer.”
His blonde curls certainly lend credence to the characterization as well as the Vans he paired with his suit for his court appearance.
All raising the question, when a surfer is charged with a crime, are you more likely to give him or her the benefit of the doubt (we’re all part of the same tribe etc.) or presume guilt (surfers are the worst)?
More as the story develops.
