Witness to NYC Subway Incident Supports Marine’s Heroic Actions.

Woman Comes Forward as Witness in Subway Altercation

By Johnathan Jones | May 18, 2023 at 12:33pm

A woman who witnessed the fatal altercation between a criminal and a Marine veteran on a New York City subway car earlier this month has come forward. Her testimony might give Marine Daniel Penny the defense he needs during his upcoming manslaughter trial.

Penny put Jordan Neely in a chokehold on May 1 after Neely made threats against passengers and spoke as if he was prepared to hurt anyone who came near him. Neely died as a result of the hold, and within a week, Penny was charged by left-wing activist Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The young man faces up to 15 years in prison if he’s found guilty.

Thankfully, donations are pouring in to help Penny with his defense. It also appears as though he might have a witness whose testimony could help convince jurors he acted only to protect life and not to take it.

The woman, described as in her sixties and “of color,” spoke to Fox News on Thursday about what she saw on the train car and also what she thinks of Penny. “He’s a hero,” she said. “It was self-defense, and I believe in my heart that he saved a lot of people that day that could have gotten hurt.”

The woman said she and others were minding their own business when Neely began to make erratic and escalating threats of violence. “I’m sitting on a train reading my book, and, all of a sudden, I hear someone spewing this rhetoric. He said, ‘I don’t care if I have to kill an F, I will. I’ll go to jail, I’ll take a bullet,’” she said.

She added, “I’m looking at where we are in the tube, in the sardine can, and I’m like, ‘OK, we’re in between stations. There’s nowhere we can go. The people on that train, we were scared. We were scared for our lives.”

The woman said Penny only intervened — with the help of two other men — after Neely used the words “bullet” and “kill.” “Why in the world would you take a bullet? Why? You don’t take a bullet because you’ve snatched something from somebody’s hand. You take a bullet for violence,” she told Fox News.

As for her impression of Penny, the woman categorized him as a good person who took actions he obviously would have rather avoided. “Mr. Penny cared for people. That’s what he did. That is his crime,” she said. “Nobody wants to kill anybody. Mr. Penny didn’t want to kill that man.”

She concluded, “You should have seen the way Mr. Penny looked. He was distraught. He was very, very, very visibly distressed. And he didn’t go. He didn’t run. He stayed.”

The woman might or might not be the same person who told The New York Post last week she was there when Neely died and that she had been praying for Penny.

Penny was honorably discharged from the military after decorated service while Neely was arrested more than 40 times in recent years for crimes ranging from the attempted kidnapping of a small girl to punching elderly people. By all accounts, the man was a public menace who would be alive today if the prosecutors who want Penny in jail had put Neely there instead.

A jury will decide whether Penny should serve time in prison for his actions. But with testimony like that offered to Fox News on Thursday, Bragg’s crusade to put the Marine behind bars feels as if it might have just gotten more difficult.