A man who kept a chokehold around the neck of an agitated fellow passenger on a New York City subway, leading to the other rider’s death, turned himself in to authorities on Friday morning on a manslaughter charge that could send him to prison for 15 years.
Daniel Penny, 24, surrendered to the authorities to be arrested and charged with second-degree manslaughter.
He was later seen being led from a New York police department precinct in lower Manhattan with his hands cuffed behind his back, wearing a suit, on his way to court.
“We cannot provide any additional information until he has been arraigned in Manhattan criminal court, which we expect to take place tomorrow,” the Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a statement on Thursday.
Jordan Neely’s killing nearly two weeks ago has triggered widespread anger across New York and the US. The death of Neely, an unhoused Michael Jackson impersonator who was Black, has become a symbol of inequality in the US as well as concern over racism and paranoia over crime and vigilantism. Penny is white.
The incident played out after Neely entered a train carriage yelling that he was tired and hungry and ready to die. A four-minute video captured by a freelance journalist showed other riders pinning Neely down against the floor and Penny putting him in a chokehold that he maintained for long after Neely had stopped moving and as at least one passenger urged him to let go.
Police found Neely unconscious, and he was pronounced dead at the hospital. Investigators determined he died from having his neck compressed, and his death was ruled a homicide by a city medical examiner.
Officers detained Penny and questioned him, but released him without booking him with a crime.
Demonstrators have held regular protests in New York calling Neely’s death vigilantism by a white man against a Black subway passenger who was experiencing homelessness as well as having longstanding mental health struggles after his mother’s murder when he was a teenager. Neely was well known to homelessness advocates in the city and had been arrested multiple times.
Neely’s family have condemned Penny for offering neither “an apology nor an expression of regret” in a statement of about the incident that he released through lawyers and which highlighted Neely’s mental health struggles. Penny’s lawyers previously said their client, along with two other riders who helped restrain Neely, had acted in self-defense.
The Neely family called the statement “a character assassination and a clear example of why he believed he was entitled to take Jordan’s life”.
“The truth is, he knew nothing about Jordan’s history when he intentionally wrapped his arms around Jordan’s neck, and squeezed and kept on squeezing,” they added.
