On May 1, 2023, Daniel Penny became a national lightning rod when he placed Jordan Neely, a homeless black man widely described as “threatening” by witnesses, into a chokehold on the New York City subway.
Neely died within hours, and the case quickly became a political Rorschach test, with Penny seen by some as a hero and by others as a racially motivated murderer. Eighteen months later, Penny is on trial for manslaughter. Last Thursday, prosecutors showed the jury video of Penny’s initial interrogation by police. It gets to the heart of why this case has captivated America.
A few hours after the incident on the F train, Daniel Penny accompanied police back to their Chinatown headquarters. In footage of his interrogation, obtained by The Free Press, Penny seems to think he’s at the police precinct to tell them about the “lunatic” who “started threatening people” on the train. The conversation starts out in a friendly tone. But as the questioning continues, Penny appears to realize that these aren’t just any police officers. And they don’t consider him a Good Samaritan, but a criminal suspect.
“Some guy came on, and he, like, whipped his jacket off, and he’s like, ‘I’m going to kill everybody,’ ” Penny tells the officers in a tiny, windowless room. “He was acting like a lunatic, like a crazy person.”
Penny, then 24 years old and a former Marine, even waives his rights to an attorney and to remain silent, ostensibly because he thinks he has nothing to hide. But then the questions begin—and they’re not about Neely, a schizophrenic with a long arrest record. They’re about him.
We have distilled the interrogation, which spanned nearly thirty minutes, into an eight-minute compilation that shows the central tension of the case Penny now faces: Is he a hero who stepped in to rescue a train full of mothers, teenagers, and children—or a dangerous vigilante who attacked a black homeless man “because he felt like he could,” as a woman who’s been watching the trial every day recently told me? Penny doesn’t know yet that Neely, who paramedics transported to a nearby hospital, has died. But one senses that he understands his life has changed forever. Watch for yourself:
Olivia Reingold is a reporter for The Free Press covering the Daniel Penny trial. Follow her on X @Olivia_Reingold and read her piece, “The Trials of Daniel Penny.“
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