Daniel Penny, the 24-year-old man who killed Jordan Neely on a New York City subway, will be charged with manslaughter in the second degree, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a statement to CBS News.
Penny is expected to turn himself in to authorities and be arraigned Friday, per the report. “We can confirm that Daniel Penny will be arrested on a charge of Manslaughter in the Second Degree,” a spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said. “We cannot provide any additional information until he has been arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court, which we expect to take place tomorrow.”
It took prosecutors eleven days to charge Penny, who killed Neely after putting him in a fatal chokehold on May 1. Neely, who was unhoused and seemingly having a mental health crisis, was reportedly yelling and acting erratically on a subway car when Penny put him in the chokehold. An independent journalist captured part of the incident on video and later said Neely had not assaulted anyone before Penny put him in the chokehold for approximately 15 minutes.
After the incident, police told reporters that they took Penny (who hadn’t been identified yet) into custody, questioned him, and released him. A few days after Neely’s death, on May 4, the medical examiner determined that Neely died of compression to his neck caused by the chokehold, ruling his death a homicide.
Before the charges were officially filed, Penny retained criminal defense attorneys Thomas Kenniff and Steven Raiser. The pair released a statement on Penny’s behalf last Friday, May 5, accusing Neely of having a “documented history of violent and erratic behavior,” and claiming he was “aggressively threatening Daniel Penny and the other passengers” on the subway.
The Neely family, through its lawyers, responded Monday, May 8, calling Penny’s statement neither “an apology nor an expression of regret,” but a “character assassination.” The lawyers also called out the way Penny’s statement “suggests that the general public has shown ‘indifference’ for people like Jordan.” But, they say, “that term is more appropriately used to describe [Penny].”