As he lay on a subway floor with a stranger's arm around his neck, Jordan Neely reached and tapped a bystander on the leg, video showed Monday at the manslaughter trial surrounding Neely's death.
The bystander bent down to Neely, who gestured urgently with his right hand for about 15 seconds. Then a third person who was already holding Neely's left arm grasped his right arm and folded it across his chest.
All the while, Marine veteran Daniel Penny continued gripping Neely by the neck from behind for over three minutes as Neely tried to roll free, briefly pried his left arm loose and swung his leg until his movement slowed, then stopped.
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As the video was replayed on big courtroom screens, Neely's father held his head in his hands and then quietly stepped out of the room.
The video — a longer version of a clip that has been seen widely on social media — and another onlooker’s footage gave the anonymous jury its first direct view of the chokehold at the heart of Penny's manslaughter trial. A third witness told jurors Monday that Penny seemed to be in a “trance” as he restrained Neely that day in 2023.
The videos also gave the public a bigger window into an encounter that has sparked protests and political debate over the line between self-defense and vigilantism and how race, homelessness, mental illness and drug use factor in. Neely was Black; Penny is white.
Prosecutors say Penny, 25, recklessly killed Neely, who had frightened passengers on the train with angry statements that some riders found threatening.
Penny has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers say he was defending himself and his fellow passengers, stepping up in one of the volatile moments that New York straphangers dread but most shy away from confronting.
Neely, 30, known to some subway riders for doing Michael Jackson impersonations, had mental health and drug problems. His family has said his life unraveled after his mother was murdered when he was a teenager and he testified at the trial that led to her boyfriend's conviction.
He crossed paths with Penny — an architecture student who'd served four years in the Marines — in a subway train on May 1, 2023.
Neely was homeless, broke, hungry, thirsty and so desperate he was willing to go to jail, he shouted at passengers who later recalled his statements to police.
He made high schooler Ivette Rosario so nervous that she thought she'd pass out, she testified Monday. She’d seen outbursts on subways before, “but not like that,” she said.
“Because of the tone, I got pretty frightened, and I got scared of what was said,” Rosario said. She told jurors Neely was shouting in “an angry tone, like when you’re fed up.”
She said she looked downward, hoping the train would get to a station before anything else happened.
Then she heard the sound of someone falling, looked up and saw Neely on the floor, with Penny's arm around his neck.
The train soon stopped, and she got out but kept watching from the platform. She would soon place one of the first 911 calls about what was happening. But first, her shaking hand pressed record on her phone.
She captured video — first seen publicly in court Monday — of Penny on the floor, gripping Neely's head in the crook of his left arm, with his right hand atop Neely's head. In the clip, an unseen bystander worries aloud that Neely is dying and urges, “Let him go!”
Mexican freelance journalist Juan Alberto Vázquez made the other video that jurors saw Monday. That recording captured a different off-camera bystander, named Larry Goodson, expressing concern for Neely's life and saying that he'll need to be released if he exhibits certain physical reactions.
Penny didn't respond, Goodson testified Monday: “He was in a whole other trance.”
Vázquez posted part of the video last year on social media, but first he cut out about a minute at the beginning when there wasn't much movement, he testified Monday. The full version, including Neely's tapping and gesturing, was shown in court.
Goodson, Rosario and Vázquez said they didn't see Neely approach anyone.
According to the defense, Neely lurched toward a woman with a stroller and said he “will kill,” and Penny felt he had to take action.
Prosecutors don’t claim that Penny intended to kill, nor fault him for initially deciding to try to stop Neely’s menacing behavior. But they say Penny went overboard by choking the man for about six minutes, even after passengers could exit the train, after others helped hold Neely down, and after he stopped moving for nearly a minute.
Neely family lawyer Donte Mills maintains that whatever he might have said, it didn’t justify what Penny did. Mills declined to comment after court Monday.
Defense attorneys say Penny kept holding onto Neely because he tried at times to get loose. Prosecutors have said Neely was fighting for survival.
The defense also challenges medical examiners’ finding that the chokehold killed Neely.
