Marine vet Daniel Penny blamed a failed criminal justice system for forcing him into his highly-charged encounter with vagrant Jordan Neely on a crowded subway train — and slammed Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for taking him to trial in the case.
Penny, 26, speaking to Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro in his first interview since a jury acquitted him of negligent homicide charges, said prosecutors seem to have their heads in the sand.
“It really showed their arrogance in kind of their lack of understanding of what’s really happening and, really, what public perception of crime [is],” he said. “And no matter whatever anyone says on the news, it’s pretty prevalent. It just showed their arrogance that they were going to get me on something.
“It was disheartening for sure — and I don’t mean to get political,” he told Pirro. “These are their policies that have clearly not worked, that the people, the general population are not in support of.
“Yet, their egos are too big just to admit that they’re wrong and they can’t reverse what they’ve done, because that’s a political suicide for them, I guess,” Penny said.
He said he was taken aback by how far the city subway system had deteriorated upon his return from active military duty when he began living and studying in the five boroughs.
“Definitely different from what I remembered it to be before the Marine Corps. Before the Marine Corps pre-COVID, it was pretty tame, pretty safe,” he said. “I guess I was pretty innocent to all the things that were going on.
“And then I got here and this whole new, I guess, perception of what happened or the perception of safety here in New York is was changed,” Penny added.
Penny, who grew up in West Islip and had two deployments while in the Marine Corps, said he was on his way home from classes at City Tech in Brooklyn when he found himself in the middle of the heated subway scene on May 1, 2023.
“Once the jacket was thrown, he didn’t say anything prior to that, at least I don’t remember him saying anything prior to that,” he said. “It was — it was really at that point, too, there was that feeling that vacuum, that I’d never felt before in any situation.”
He said he took off his earbuds as things quickly unfolded “to keep an eye on the situation” as Neely began screaming and threatening straphangers, loudly making demands from frightened passengers for fast food and drinks, and warned that he was willing to kill someone and go to jail.
“Within those 15 seconds, I mean, there was contemplation,” Penny told Pirro. “Should I just wait? Should I go to a different car? Should I move away? But I saw the looks on — on the mother, on the, on the school kids, on the other passengers, women, children.
“The threats were imminent and something had to be done,” he said. “[Passengers] were holding each other and just — and people were stuck to their chairs. They felt pinned, and I felt pinned. I felt nervous, I felt scared.”
He said that’s when he decided to act.
“When we first get to the ground, he lands on my chest. He knocks the wind [out of] me. I hit my head on the … subway floor,” Penny told Pirro. “There’s a moment of calm. A feel of a tension in his body.
“It’s almost like he was shocked that someone did something. And that lasted like a second or two. And I would — I was — in that second or two, I was hoping that that would be it,” he said. “Didn’t happen… [Neely] planted his feet on his ground and arched back. He was able to like lift me up and pedal his feet.”
Penny, who called Neely “extraordinarily strong,” said he wrapped his legs around him and hung on — sensing the vagrant’s strength came in part from smoking the synthetic drug K-2.
“I look over my shoulder and one of the things I say is, ‘where are the police?’ I’m exhausted, I’m tired,” he said. “I was swimming a mile a day and I was still, could not believe that his level of endurance.
“At some point the thrashing ended” and police arrived — but didn’t tell him Neely had died when detectives later brought him in for questioning, he said.
Penny was later indicted on manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the case. On Friday, with a jury hopelessly deadlocked on the top charge, prosecutors asked that the manslaughter count be tossed for jurors to deliberate only on the negligent homicide charge.
On Monday the jury acquitted Penny on that charge.
