Daniel Penny, facing manslaughter charges in connection with the death of a homeless man on a New York City subway, said he was not trying to choke him to death and that he did not have him in a chokehold for 15 minutes as has been reported.
Penny, 24, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, said in a series of videos released by his lawyers Sunday that the homeless man, Jordan Neely, 30, was threatening passengers. Penny said he was trying to restrain Neely, not "trying to choke him to death," the New York Post reported.
According to the medical examiner's office, Neely died from "compression of the neck," but Penny said he only restrained Neely for a few minutes and called the matter a "scary situation."
"The man stumbled on," Penny said. "He appeared to be on drugs. The doors closed, and he ripped his jacket off and threw it down at the people sitting next to me at my left."
Neely said he was listening to music but removed his headphones to hear what Neely was saying.
"The three main threats that he repeated over and over again were, 'I'm going to kill you, I'm prepared to go to jail for life, and I'm willing to die,'" Penny said.
Penny is 6-feet-2 but said Neely was bigger than him intimidated him and was yelling in the faces of "terrified" passengers.
"There's a common misconception that Marines don't get scared," Penny said. "We're actually taught that one of our core values is courage, and courage is not the absence of fear but how you handle fear.
"I was scared for myself, but I looked around and there were women and children. He was yelling in their faces saying these threats. I just couldn't sit still."
In a video of the encounter, Penny, who is due back in court July 17, is shown holding Neely in a chokehold on the subway car's floor until Neely stopped moving. Penny denied reports from "some people" that he held onto Neely for 15 minutes.
"Between stops is only a couple of minutes, so the whole interaction lasted less than five minutes," Penny said.
"Some people say I was trying to choke him to death — which is also not true. I was trying to restrain him," Penny added. "You can see in the video there's a clear rise and fall of his chest, indicating that he's breathing. I'm trying to restrain him from being able to carry out the threats."
Neely never regained consciousness and was later pronounced dead.
Last month, Penny also denied to The Post that he took action against Neely because the homeless man was Black, insisting that "I'm not a white supremacist."
On Sunday, Penny said the notion that the incident was racial violence is "ridiculous."
"I didn't see a Black man threatening passengers, I saw a man threatening passengers, a lot of whom were people of color," Penny said, noting that a fellow passenger helping to restrain Neely was also a person of color.
Neely had been a former street performer who often did impressions of Michael Jackson and had a history of mental illness. His family has blamed authorities for not making sure he was receiving the care he needed.
The family also has called on Penny to be charged with murder, not manslaughter, in Neely's death.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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