Witness to Jordan Neely Chokehold Death Calls Daniel Penny a ‘Hero’

A retiree who witnessed Marine veteran Daniel Penny fatally choke an erratic homeless man on a train earlier this month called him a hero and slammed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for prosecuting him.

“He’s a hero,” said the passenger, who has lived in New York City more than 50 years.

The witness, who described herself as a woman of color, said it was wrong for Bragg to charge Penny with second-degree manslaughter.

“It was self-defense, and I believe in my heart that he saved a lot of people that day that could have gotten hurt,” she told Fox News Digital.

Jordan Neely, 30, who suffered from mental illness, stormed onto the northbound F train at about 2:30 p.m. May 1 screaming and threatening passengers, she said.

“I’m sitting on a train reading my book, and, all of a sudden, I hear someone spewing this rhetoric. He said, ‘I don’t care if I have to kill an F, I will. I’ll go to jail, I’ll take a bullet,’” recalled the woman, who is in her 60s.

The terrified passengers crowded toward the exit doors.

“I’m looking at where we are in the tube, in the sardine can, and I’m like, ‘OK, we’re in between stations. There’s nowhere we can go,’” she said. “The people on that train, we were scared. We were scared for our lives.”

Penny stepped in when Neely started using the word “kill” and “bullet.”

“Why in the world would you take a bullet? Why? You don’t take a bullet because you’ve snatched something from somebody’s hand. You take a bullet for violence,” she added.

The witness said it was clear to her that Penny waited until the last minute to intervene for the sake of his fellow passengers.

She heard a thump when he dragged Neely to the ground but couldn’t see clearly until the doors opened at the Broadway-Lafayette station and most of the passengers exited.

The witness waited for police to arrive and provided a statement.

“Mr. Penny cared for people. That’s what he did. That is his crime,” she told Fox News Digital. After the altercation, she and at least three other passengers thanked him.

“Nobody wants to kill anybody. Mr. Penny didn’t want to kill that man,” she said. “You should have seen the way Mr. Penny looked. He was distraught. He was very, very, very visibly distressed. And he didn’t go. He didn’t run. He stayed.”

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“This isn’t about race. This is about people of all colors who were very, very afraid and a man who stepped in to help them,” she said. {snip}

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{snip} Neely had been arrested more than 40 times, including for numerous violent assaults on strangers in the subway.

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The problems facing New York City are now plaguing the U.S., the witness noted.

“It’s not looking that good for us,” she said. “You know, we were supposed to be an example to other nations but are turning into a Third World country.”

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