Former U.S. Marine Daniel Penny,24, who placed Jordan Neely in a chokehold on a New York subway when Neely was acting aggressively toward passengers, was arraigned Friday on second degree manslaughter charges for his death after turning himself in.
He was released after posting a $100,000 bond.
Despite the fact that no evidence has been submitted in a court, public figures — even those who should know better — are trying to turn the incident into a racial issue.
Penny is white and Neely was Black.
Geraldo Rivera, a lawyer and Fox News correspondent-at-large, believed race was significant enough to at least mention it.
"'Jordan Neely’s life mattered,' says NY’s Mayor Eric Adams of the Black man choked to death by another subway passenger, a white former Marine Daniel Penny," he tweeted.
MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan was more direct.
He blasted Reuters for identifying Penny as a "former Marine," calling it "white privilege."
"This is what white privilege looks like — the irrelevant former job title, the passive voice," he said. "Black and brown alleged killers don’t get media coverage like this."
Actually they do.
In 2019 when U.S. forces killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi after raiding his compound in northern Syria, The Washington Post initially described him as the “terrorist-in-chief," which he was.
As the Islamic State leader, he was responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents, including Americans.
Apparently The Post had an editorial meeting that day and decided that sounded too harsh, especially for what was essentially an obituary.
They changed their headline to describe him as an "austere religious scholar."
Even journalist Yashar Ali, who has contributed to The Huffington Post, NBC News, and New York magazine, thought it odd, saying, "They had it right the first time."
And media outlets both here and abroad attempt to paint Neely as a nice guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Guardian’s headline, for example, proclaimed “Jordan Neely: man killed by rider’s chokehold was talented dancer.”
See?
He wasn’t a bad guy.
He was like Fred Astaire, with happy feet!
In truth, prior to his death, Neely was arguably the privileged one because he was still walking the streets despite a lengthy record, having been arrested more than 40 times, according to the New York Daily News.
Although most were minor offenses like turnstile jumping, they also included serious felonies, including:
- In 2015 he was arrested for attempted kidnapping after he was caught dragging a 7-year-old girl down a New Jersey street.
- In 2019, he was arrested for punching a 64-year-old man in the face during an argument.
- He spent 15 months in mental healthcare in 2021 after he punched a 67-year-old woman in the face.
In addition, he was self-medicating for depression with a manmade cannabis called K-2.
If anything, Neely was the privileged one; Penny is the one facing trial. An elderly passenger who witnessed everything, told The New York Post that she was praying for him, and even thanked him afterwards.
"I hope he has a great lawyer, and I’m praying for him," the 66-year-old woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, told The Post Thursday night. "And I pray that he gets treated fairly, I really do. Because after all of this ensued, I went back and made sure that I said 'Thank you' to him."
She has cause for concern. Not only are the charges serious, but they were brought by the George Soros District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
But it looks like her prayers are being answered.
On Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., promoted a crowd funding account that had been set up for Penny’s legal defense.
"We must defeat the Soros-Funded DAs, stop the Left's pro-criminal agenda, and take back the streets for law abiding citizens," he tweeted. "We stand with Good Samaritans like Daniel Penny. Let’s show this Marine . . . America’s got his back."
On Saturday the crowd funding service reported that donations were coming in so fast that they’d crashed the site.
"We have had a big surge in our traffic and our servers were temporarily overwhelmed," GiveSendGo tweeted.
"We are aware and are a few minutes from resolving the issue. The campaign for Daniel Penny is over 1 million dollars and the money is secure."
So far the fund is approaching $2 million.
All too often people are plagued with the bystander syndrome: if they see someone in distress, they’ll either turn away and pretend it’s not happening, or they pull out their phone and begin recording it.
The reason for this surge in funding has nothing to do with race. It’s because despite the “bystander syndrome,” people like to see themselves as Penny — a regular guy who saw a problem and stepped up to help.
We need more of him.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
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