In an interview on Monday, the lawyer representing Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old former Marine, stated that Jordan Neely began “swinging his arms at passengers” while aboard a subway train in New York City, adding that led to an intervention by his client to protect passengers.
“Penny placed Neely, a homeless man with over 40 arrests and a history of mental health issues, in a chokehold after Neely embarked on an aggressive rant and began screaming that he did not care if he went to jail,” The Daily Wire reported.
During his first interview regarding the case, attorney Steve Raiser was asked by Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro about Penny’s state of mind when he put a chokehold on Neely.
“He was fearful for the safety of those passengers,” Raiser said, according to the New York Post. “So when he acted, his mindset was to keep his fellow passengers safe from attack.
“Neely entering the train and acting in a very violent manner, both physically and with words. He would say things to the effect that, you know, I need certain things, I need food, I need this or that. And if I don’t get it, I don’t care if I go to prison for the rest of my life,” the attorney continued.
“And the passengers actually have said that they interpreted that to mean, well, when would you go to prison for the rest of your life if you kill somebody? So everybody got the message,” he said.
Raiser said that the situation quickly rose to the point where Neely was “swinging his arms at passengers, throwing his jacket down, [and] making threats” toward other straphangers.
The attorney added says that they were initially told a grand jury would be empaneled via “a very deliberate process” to determine if Penny should be charged. Then they “got a call one night before Danny was asked to surrender and said he’s got to surrender to the police department tomorrow, so at that point we were like, what do you mean tomorrow, this was going to be a long process suddenly it’s tomorrow.”
He also pushed back on critics who claim that Penny, who is white, only attacked Neely because he was black.
“None of that is based on the facts,” he said. “As to race, it’s simply not the motivation for Danny. He is the one that put himself in danger, to save who? All the people on that train. Black people, brown people, white people, it didn’t matter to Danny. Danny put his life at risk to save all those people. It has nothing to do with race.”
A GiveSendGo online fundraising account has raised more than $2 million for Penny’s defense fund.
