At Daniel Penny’s manslaughter trial on Monday, a video that had never been seen before showed him holding homeless man Jordan Neely by the neck on a subway floor while people around him begged him to “let him go.”
A high school student named Ivette Rosario recorded the one-minute clip. She later said that Neely’s rant on the F train before Penny threw him to the ground scared her.
“I was so scared I thought I was going to pass out,” Rosario, who is now 19 years old, said in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Jurors got their first look at the deadly encounter in May 2023 that was at the center of the high-profile case against Penny. In the video, Rosario’s hands can be seen shaking.
“He’s dying, you have to let go!” someone can be heard saying on the video, which was taken from the platform outside the train car. Someone else says, “Let him go.”
“Do you have to hold him down?” something a third person said.
“Get the police!” During the video, Rosario yells.
Rosario told the jury that Neely, 30, yelled that he was homeless, hungry, and “didn’t care about going back to jail” after jumping on the uptown F train at the Second Avenue stop.
Rosario said in court on Monday that Neely’s rant, which made Penny shut the mentally ill man down in the uptown F train as it got close to the Broadway-Lafayette station, was so scary that she “thought I was going to pass out.”
The senior in high school said she had seen people lose it on the train before, but Neely’s “tone” made this one seem different.
“Things have been said to me on the train before, but not like this,” she said in court.
Rosario said she closed her eyes and pressed her head against her friend’s chest while she waited for the doors to open on the next stop of the train so she could run away.
Then she heard a thud.
She opened her eyes to see Penny lying on the floor of the train car holding Neely down. His arm was around the homeless man’s neck.
Rosario said in court that she took the short video on her cellphone from the subway platform and then called 911.
Penny, 26, wore a brown suit, a blue shirt, and a purple tie. He looked at a monitor in front of him and did not say a word while the video played in court.
On Monday afternoon, jurors watched the famous video, which was taken by journalist Juan Alberto Vasquez and shows Penny choking Neely for a few minutes, even after Neely stops moving on his own.
He stayed calm. As the prosecutors played the video, Neely’s dad, Andre Zachery, cried into his hands. He then left the courtroom for a short time while the jury saw the shocking video a second time.
Larry Goodson, who is 51 years old, said that he told Penny that he would kill Neely if he didn’t free him.
Goodson testified in court on Monday afternoon and told the judges that he saw Neely urinating and feces on himself while Penny choked him for a while.
“If he poop or poop on himself, you’re going to let him go because you’re going to kill him,” Goodson said in court.
Goodson told Penny, “If you don’t let him go, and that’s where his body is right now, we’re going to lose him.”
Goodson said Penny, who looked like she was in a “trance,” didn’t listen to him.
Goodson, who has been taking the subway for 50 years, also told the jury that Neely wasn’t threatening, which was different from what Penny’s lawyers said, who said that Neely was going after specific straphangers.
“I wasn’t in danger.” “I wasn’t scared,” Goodson said. “This person wasn’t making threats against me.”
Goodson admitted to being addicted to crack cocaine in the past and spending many years in prison. During cross-examination, Penny’s lawyer, Thomas Kenniff, asked Goodson if he might be more afraid than other people.
“You may have had a different life experience than most people, do you agree?” He was asked by Kenniff.
Penny has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers say that what he did was okay because he was trying to protect his fellow terrified straphangers from Neely.
At Penny’s opening statements on Friday, her lawyer said that he saw Neely threaten a woman with a stroller who was hiding with her baby behind a bench and say the words “I will kill.”
Rosario said in court on Monday that Neely didn’t seem to be going after or touching anyone, and he also didn’t look like he had a gun on him.
Prosecutors say Penny’s first goal was to keep the other passengers safe, but he “went way too far” when he choked Neely for six minutes, even after most of the other passengers had left the car.
Police say Penny choked Neely for a minute after he stopped moving on his own. She is charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
If found guilty, he could spend up to 15 years in jail.
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