Subway straphangers who witnessed the May 2023 chokehold incident that ended in Jordan Neely’s death shed light on Friday on the circumstances preceding the chaotic clash as Daniel Penny’s manslaughter trial wrapped up its first week of testimony.
A jury heard how Neely caused panic among riders when he boarded the car of an uptown F train at Second Ave., threw down his jacket and started screaming.
“If I remember correctly, he said: ‘I don’t give a damn. I’ll kill a motherf—er. Oh, I’m ready to die.’ Something like that,” Alethea Gittings, a 50-year city resident who rides the train every day, said, describing Neely’s behavior.
“I was scared s—less.”
Start-up founder Dan Couvreur, 29, said he also felt Neely’s outburst was out of the ordinary compared to what he’d witnessed in his years riding the subway, leaving him “terrified.”
“What really stood out was the tone,” Couvreur said.
“I’ve ridden the subway to and from work, going out and stuff. This was just another kind of tone of desperation he had in his voice — the anger, the aggressiveness and that tone really just stood out.”
Lori Sitro, a research director, was taking her 5-year-old son to a therapy appointment when Neely boarded the train.
“He was shouting in people’s faces: ‘I don’t have water. I don’t have food. I don’t have a home. I want to hurt people. I want to go to Rikers. I want to go to prison.’ And he was getting increasingly belligerent,” Sitro testified.
“He was getting to about a foot, a [foot’s] distance from them, right up into their faces. He was lunging at people, in different directions. It was very erratic and unpredictable.”
Andrew Savulich; Barry Williams for New York Daily News
Jordan Neely and Daniel Penny. (Andrew Savulich; Barry Williams for New York Daily News)
In his opening statement last week, Penny’s lawyer, Thomas Kenniff, told jurors they would hear that his client had jumped into action when Neely turned his sights toward a bunch of women and said, “I will kill,” as a mother hid her child behind his stroller.
Sitro’s testimony backed up part of that narrative — but not the alleged threat.
“I actually took the stroller that I had and I put it in front of my son to create a barrier of sorts, you know, because I didn’t know what was going to happen,” she testified.
“Did Mr. Neely ever lunge at you and say: ‘I will kill?’” prosecutor Jillian Shartrand asked.
“No, he did not,” Sitro testified.
The mom of two said she felt “very relieved” when Penny took Neely down from behind.
Gittings, Couvreur and Sitro testified that they did not see Neely carrying a weapon or directing his ire at anyone in particular. He was not armed, jurors have been told.
Court evidence
Police bodycam video shows medics (right) working on Jordan Neely as police set up a crime scene in the subway station. (Court evidence)
Penny, 26, of Suffolk County, L.I., has pleaded not guilty to second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. If the jury finds him guilty of the top count, he could face up to 15 years in state prison.
The former U.S. Marine, who served in the military for four years, was in college studying architecture and working as a barback in Brooklyn at the time of the incident. His lawyers have argued that his actions were reasonable, saying the case was about “a young man who did for others what we would all want someone to do for us.”
In the years before he died, Neely, a native of Manhattan and New Jersey, battled homelessness, untreated mental illness and drug addiction and racked up a substantial arrest record. He performed Michael Jackson songs on the streets and subways when he was well.
Prosecutors have acknowledged that Neely’s actions on the train provoked reasonable fear and that Penny’s initial intent to protect passengers as the train traveled between stations for around 30 seconds was appropriate.
They say he crossed the threshold into criminality, though, by continuing to restrain Neely in a chokehold that would prove fatal for 5 minutes and 53 seconds after the subway reached the Broadway-Lafayette station and passengers fled the train car.
Jurors next week are expected to hear testimony from the medical examiner, which ruled Neely died by homicide by compression of the neck. Penny’s legal team is expected to challenge that determination by bringing up his health history and previous drug use.
The anonymous jury panel is also expected to hear from a man who assisted Penny on the train. Prosecutors have said the man told Penny to ease up on his grasp around Neely’s neck while assuring Penny that he had Neely’s arms under control, but that Penny did not let up.
