To Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, former U.S. Marine Daniel Penny is a criminal. To 99.9999 percent of normal New Yorkers, particularly straphangers, he’s a hero.
Penny turned himself in to the cops today to answer a charge of second-degree manslaughter for applying the chokehold that sent violent subway marauder Jordan Neely to the boneyard.
The facts are not in dispute. On May 1, career criminal Neely threatened subway riders. Penny stopped the 30-year-old nutter with a chokehold. Unhappily — or perhaps happily for those who ride the big city’s perilous subways — Neely breathed his last.
Thus did pro-criminal Bragg and his prosecutors, the anarcho-tyranny’s legal arm, charge Penny instead of giving him a medal.
The Chokehold
Yet a medal is what Penny indeed deserves. Thug Neely not only threatened passengers and witnesses, cops said, but also threw trash at them.
One eyewitness explained why Penny clearly thought he had to act. “He [Neely] started screaming in an aggressive manner,” journalist Juan Alberto Vazquez told the New York Post:
He said he had no food, he had no drink, that he was tired and doesn’t care if he goes to jail. He started screaming all these things, took off his jacket, a black jacket that he had, and threw it on the ground.
No wonder subway riders were frightened, and no wonder Penny, doing his duty as almost any Marine would, sprang into action. Penny put Neely in a chokehold.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass detailed the action for the judge at Penny’s first court appearance today, the Post reported:
Other passengers “observed Mr. Neely…making threats and scaring passengers,” Steinglass said.
“The defendant approached Mr. Neely from behind and placed him in the chokehold, taking him down to the ground,” the prosecutor told the court. “When the train arrived at the next stop, Broadway-Lafayette, the defendant continued to hold Mr. Neely in the chokehold for several minutes.”
Two other men helped Penny restrain Neely’s arms, according to Steinglass.
“At some point, Mr. Neely stopped moving. The defendant continued to hold Mr. Neely for a period and then released him,” Steinglass said.
Penny was released on $100,000 bond.
Neely’s Record
But here’s what the anarcho-tyranny’s legal hitmen won’t discuss: Neely’s lengthy criminal record.
As media reports explained after Neely rode a subway train to the Great Beyond, cops have arrested him 42 times for such crimes as disorderly conduct and fare-beating. They also collared him on drug charges.
Yet Neely wasn’t just a stoned turnstile jumper. He was a thug who beat up women. Two years ago, he clobbered a 67-year-old woman in the East Village. She suffered a broken nose and fractured orbital bone.
That’s the guy who inspired protesters to jump on subway tracks.
Penny didn’t know Neely’s criminal record, but he did know the man was about to harm someone. That explains the chokehold.
Neely Ready to Kill
One witness to Neely’s threatening outburst explained why Penny had to use the chokehold. She told the Post that Penny didn’t move against Neely right away, and that the Marine did the right thing when he immobilized the would-be assailant.
“The subway rider said Neely, who had a history of mental illness, was threatening passengers after he hopped on an F train in Manhattan,” the Post reported:
“He said, ‘I don’t care. I’ll take a bullet, I’ll go to jail’ because he would kill people on the train,” the woman said of Neely. “He said, ‘I would kill a motherf—er. I don’t care. I’ll take a bullet. I’ll go to jail.’”
The retiree said Penny did not initially engage with Neely during the wild rant until things got out of hand and he felt the urge to step in.
“This gentleman, Mr. Penny, did not stand up,” the rider said. “Did not engage with the gentleman. He said not a word. It was all Mr. Neely that was … threatening the passengers. If he did not get what he wants.”
When the action ended, the woman thanked Penny for stopping what might have been a bloodbath.
But that, again, won’t interfere with the anarcho-tyranny’s plan to punish the innocent and protect the guilty. Soros prosecutor Bragg earlier tried to prosecute Jose Alba, a law-abiding citizen, an innocent defendant who killed an assailant in self-defense. Bragg dropped the second-degree murder charge when he reckoned that even he had pushed too far.
No so with Penny, who must now rely on a jury to protect him from Bragg’s unethical and malicious prosecution.
