By The Free Press | Created at 2024-11-25 17:02:23 | Updated at 2024-11-27 03:45:59
1 day ago
Six minutes. That’s all it took for two men to meet on the F train in New York City—and for their lives to change forever. It began a little after 2 p.m. on Monday, May 1, 2023. Jordan Neely, a homeless black man who suffered from schizophrenia, began screaming on the F train that he was looking for food. According to witnesses, Neely said he was “ready to die.” That he would “kill a motherfucker.” The other riders were scared.
One of the passengers on that train was Daniel Penny, a then–24-year-old former Marine. A white man. Penny put Neely in a hold that lasted for six minutes. Afterward, Neely, 30, was rushed to the hospital and declared dead. Penny went to a police precinct, where his statement kicked off a legal case that’s ongoing right now in Manhattan. If he is found guilty of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, he could spend 15 years in prison.
But the case of Daniel Penny and Jordan Neely isn’t just another sad story from a city afflicted with homelessness and crime. It’s a Rorschach test of America and our divided views on race. On one side are those who say Penny is a racially motivated murderer, a vigilante who thought he could put his hands on a poor, black man because he was poor and black.
On the other side are those who believe Penny is a hero who protected his fellow riders when they were faced with an immediate threat at a time when the police and the government have failed to keep the public safe.
Over the past month, I’ve been covering Penny’s trial. It is expected to go to a jury next week. I have heard the cases put forth by both the prosecution and the defense—but I’ve also watched video evidence screened for the jury. Now, for the first time, we have threaded together video footage from police body cameras and bystander phones to reveal, minute by minute, the scene on the train, the actions of the police, and the real-time reactions of witnesses.
In collaboration with Free Press video journalists Tanya Lukyanova and Jana Kozlowski, we have structured this compilation to unfold in real time, just as it did on the day Neely died. Some of this footage has appeared on broadcast TV, but most has not been seen before by the public—certainly not in full. You will see the hold Penny used to contain Neely. You will see a passenger tell an officer that Neely scared the “living daylights out of everybody” when he boarded the train. You will see paramedics attempt to revive Neely, and what they found in his pockets when they searched his clothes for a weapon.
Click below to watch what really unfolded on May 1, 2023, when Jordan Neely boarded an uptown F train and met Daniel Penny:
Olivia Reingold is a writer for The Free Press. This video was produced and edited by Tanya Lukyanova. Jana Kozlowski was the executive producer. Read Olivia’s story, The Trials of Daniel Penny.
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