(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Daniel Penny, the U.S. Marine veteran who used an allegedly fatal chokehold to neutralize a violent and mentally deranged homeless man on the New York City subway, has been hailed as a hero by a witness who happens to be a “woman of color,” Fox 9 News reported.
“He’s a hero,” said the passenger, said the passenger who described herself as a woman of color and who has lived in New York City more than 50 years. Penny is being prosecuted by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for second-degree manslaughter .
“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 witness said.
Jordan Neely, 30, an alleged subway performer, reportedly had an erratic metal breakdown and held several subway riders hostage, forcing Penny to use a chokehold to restrain the man. Two other individuals assisted in restraining the homeless heckler.
The attack took place on May 1. Witness heard Neely going on a crazed rant on the train.
“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, noting that she and others on the train were terrified and thought they were going to die.
“I’m looking at where we are in the tube, in the sardine can, and I’m like, ‘OK, we’re in between stations,” she added.
“There’s nowhere we can go. The people on that train, we were scared. We were scared for our lives.”
The woman noted that Penny intervened when Neely began to use language such as “kill” and “bullet.”
“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 added.
The witness said Penny does not deserve the treatment that he has received since the fateful incident.
“Mr. Penny cared for people. That’s what he did. That is his crime,” she said, adding that “Mr. Penny didn’t want to kill that man” and describing Penny as “distraught” in the aftermath of Neely’s death.
