Witness After Witness In Daniel Penny Trial Say They Feared Jordan Neely’s Threats On Subway

Nearly every witness who has testified in the trial of Daniel Penny has said they were afraid of Jordan Neely as he threatened passengers on a New York City subway last year.

After Neely allegedly threatened passengers, Penny, a 26-year-old former Marine, placed him in a chokehold to get him to stop. Neely died following the chokehold, and Penny faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of manslaughter or up to 4 years if he’s convicted on the lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide.

Multiple witnesses testified on Friday saying they were afraid of Neely, following similar testimony from witnesses testifying earlier in the week. Jurors were also shown multiple recordings showing Neely unresponsive in the subway car, ABC 7 reported.

In one recording from a police body cam, Alethea Gittings recalls what she heard Neely saying prior to Penny’s intervention.

“I heard the young man that’s on the floor saying, you know, ‘hey, I’m willing to die. You know, I’ll do anything. I’ll go to jail. I don’t care. I don’t care,'” Gittings said.

Gittings testified on Friday that she thanked Penny for his actions.

“The guy in the tan did take him down like, very respectfully and just like held. He just held him. Yeah, yeah, He just held him. He didn’t choke him,” Gittings told officers in the footage played in court.

Two other witnesses on Friday described their fear of Neely. A mother on the train who was with her 5-year-old son said she “actually took the stroller that I had and put it in front of my son to create a barrier.”

On Thursday, 18-year-old Moriela Sanchez testified that Neely, 30, began threatening passengers as soon as he entered the subway car on May 1, 2023, Fox News reported.

“If no one gives him water or food, he’s gonna start putting hands on people,” Sanchez testified. “He was going to start attacking.”

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Sanchez explained that Neely was shouting at everyone in the car but had not touched anyone.

Another witness, Kaydren Schrunk, said Neely was shouting in the middle of the train car, made threatening gestures, smelled like “soiled sweatpants,” and that she feared he had a gun or knife, even though she didn’t see one and he was unarmed.

She also testified that Neely made threatening comments toward the passengers.

“This was the first time in my life that I took a moment because I was scared that I was going to die in that moment,” she said.

Even with this testimony, Penny’s defense asked for a mistrial, saying Penny was not getting a fair trial, Fox News reported. Penny’s defense argued that the prosecution was attempting to turn Penny into a “white vigilante” and allowed witness Johnny Grima – who has a conviction of smashing someone with a baseball bat – to call Penny a “murderer” even though Penny isn’t charged with or accused of murder.