Acquitted subway vigilante Daniel Penny said he had not choice but to subdue a deranged Jordan Neely after the vagrant threatened to kill straphangers aboard a Manhattan subway train last year.
The 26-year-old Marine vet, who was found not guilty of negligent homicide charges in Neely’s death this week, told Fox “The Five” host Jeanine Pirro that he took the threats seriously enough to jump into action.
“The guilt I would’ve felt if someone did get hurt, if he did do what he was threatening to do, I would never be able to live with myself,” Penny said during the exclusive interview due to air in its entirety Wednesday.
“I’ll take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed,” he said.
Penny also said he felt “vulnerable” and felt he was also in danger when he grabbed Neely and put him in a chokehold aboard a crowded Manhattan F train on May 1, 2023.
“He’s just threatening to kill people, he’s threatening to go to jail forever, go to jail for the rest of his life,” he told Pirro. “And now I’m on the ground with him, I’m on my back in a very vulnerable position.
“If I let him go I’m on my back now. He can just turn around and doing what he said to me. Killing, hurting.
“I’m not a confrontational person,” he added. “I really don’t extend myself. This type of thing is very uncomfortable. All this attention and lime light is very uncomfortable. I would prefer without it. I didn’t want any type of attention or praise, and I still don’t.”
A teaser clip from the Fox interview aired Tuesday, one day after Penny was acquitted in the polarizing case after Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg charged him with manslaughter last year.
On Friday, with the jury deadlocked, prosecutors asked the judge to toss the manslaughter charge and have the panel continue deliberation on the lesser homicide charged — which led to Mondays acquittal.
Bragg has come under fire since the verdict from critics who claim Penny is a hero, not a villain, who protected subway riders from a violent and potentially dangerous vagrant.
Without singling anyone out by name, Penny complained to Pirro about “self-serving” officials who have used his fatal encounter with Neely as part of “a political game.”
“These are their policies,” he said. “And I don’t mean to get political, I really don’t’ want to make any enemies, really — although I guess I have already.
“But these are their policies that have clearly not worked, that the people, the general population, are not in support,” Penny added. “Yet, their goes are too big to agree that they’re wrong.”
