Jordan Neely was 'trying to attack everybody' before Daniel Penny intervened: witnesses

On Thursday, a 911 call was played during the Manhattan manslaughter trial of former Marine Daniel Penny in which subway passengers could be heard telling dispatchers that a homeless man, later identified as  Jordan Neely, was "trying to attack everybody" before the former Marine put him in a chokehold. That encounter later led to Neely's death.

In the audio, 18-year-old Moriela Sanchez could be heard asking the 911 operator to send police and an ambulance because someone was attacking passengers on the uptown F train subway car. The audio was played during her testimony in the Manhattan Supreme Court.

During the 1 minute recording, Sanchez said about Neely, “He’s trying to attack everybody.” She described the attacker as black and that “There’s one white man holding him down, holding the homeless guy down.” Sanchez added, “Penny put his hands around [Neely’s] neck and then dropped him down so he wouldn’t attack anybody.”

Sanchez’s friend Ivette Rosario, who testified on Monday that she was “scared” of Neely, was the one who took the video of the May 2023 incident with her cellphone that showed Penny holding Neely on the floor of the subway car. Sanchez also recorded a video of Neely lying on the floor of the subway car, which the jury also watched.

During Sanchez’s three-minute-long video, which she recorded while exiting the subway and through the car’s window, first responders can be seen taking Neely’s pulse and trying to resuscitate him. Officers found a pulse and attempted CPR. They said they did not attempt mouth-to-mouth because they were concerned Neely may have hepatitis. 

According to the New York Post, Sanchez began to cry when asked by Penny’s lawyer about whether Neely’s behavior scared her, and Sanchez admitted she was relieved when Penny took down Neely. Penny’s lawyers asked Sanchez about her contradiction from her grand jury testimony during which she said Penny wasn’t squeezing Neely’s neck, rather, was trying to protect people on the train.

Another witness Caedryn Schrunk testified after Sanchez that she thought she was going to die after listening to Neely’s “satanic” rant. Schrunk said Neely had “visibly soiled sweatpants” and said, “I don’t care if I die. Kill me, lock me up.” She added, “There was a moment where I truly thought I was going to die,” noting she was relieved when Penny acted.

Schrunk testified that she also saw a mother shielding her baby. She was followed by Johnny Grima, a former homeless man, who told the court that he walked up to where Penny and Neely were after the subway stopped and said he saw Penny release Neely from the chokehold and then said Neely should be rolled onto his side so he wouldn’t choke, adding “The guy who’s choking him out won’t let anyone near? That’s weird. That’s wrong."

Three NYPD cops also testified, two of them about 911 calls that came in during the incident at the Broadway-Lafayette station, and the bodycam footage of the third Officer Isatou Ceesay, was played in court as he testified. Ceesay said Penny told him that Neely “came on the train, he was throwing sh*t. He said he was ready to die, to go to prison for life.”

Penny’s defense attorney Thomas Kenniff accused prosecutors of attempting to show his client as a “white vigilante” and asked for a mistrial, but the judge denied the request. Penny is facing 15 years in jail if convicted.