Source: Pacific Press / Getty
Weeks after being seen on video choking Jordan Neely on a subway train, Daniel Penny publicly speaks about being charged with Neely’s death.
Penny spoke out about the incident for the first time in an interview with Dana Kennedy of the New York Post in a Long Island enclave not far from where he grew up. The 24-year-old, who is facing manslaughter charges for the killing of Neely, claims that his move to put the 30-year-old houseless man in a chokehold “had nothing to do with race.”
“I judge a person based on their character. I’m not a white supremacist,” Penny continued. “Everybody who’s ever met me can tell you, I love all people, I love all cultures. You can tell by my past and all my travels and adventures around the world. I was actually planning a road trip through Africa before this happened.”
The former Marine said he was on his way to the gym after going to school when he encountered Neely on the northbound F train on May 1st. He alleged that Neely was invoking “terror” and was “menacing”. “I can tell you that the threats, the menacing, the terror that Jordan Neely introduced to that train has already been well documented. I don’t think it’s going to even be controverted,” he said to Kennedy. Penny also seemed to suggest that he would do what he did again. “You know, I live an authentic and genuine life,” he said. “And I would — if there was a threat and danger in the present.”
Penny was asked what he’d say to Neely’s family, who buried him last Friday (May 19th). “I’m deeply saddened by the loss of life,” he said. “It’s tragic what happened to him. Hopefully, we can change the system that’s so desperately failed us.” Lennon Edwards and Donte Mills, the lawyers representing Neely’s family, ripped the interview, calling it disgraceful and an attempt to whitewash Penny. “There’s no remorse,” Mr. Edwards said. “There is no accountability. There was no acknowledgment he killed someone.”
Penny was blasted by Reverend Al Sharpton in his eulogy for Neely, focusing on the way Penny has been treated by the media at large and argued that if Neely was a white Elvis Presley impersonator and Penny was Black and choking him, police “would not have let that Black guy leave the precinct that night.” Kennedy informed Penny of those comments, who nodded and said he was “not sure” of who Sharpton is. “I don’t really know celebrities that well,” he said.
