The retired US marine who has been charged with manslaughter after he placed a fellow New York City subway rider in a deadly chokehold has denied that he was acting as a vigilante, insisting “I’m not a white supremacist … I’m a normal guy.”
Daniel Penny, who is white, defended his conduct in an interview with the New York Post. He expressed sadness but showed no personal remorse about the death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old Black man who had been struggling with mental illness and lack of housing.
“I’m deeply saddened by the loss of life,” Penny, 24, said. “It’s tragic what happened to him. Hopefully we can change the system that’s so desperately failed us.”
Neely died on 1 May in a confrontation that was recorded by an onlooker on video. Eyewitnesses reported that he had been shouting on the F train and begging for money but had not been violent towards other passengers when he was dragged to the ground and gripped around his neck by Penny for several minutes.
The killing sparked a debate about racism, homelessness and vigilantism in New York. At Neely’s funeral at a church in Harlem on Friday, the civil rights activist and pastor Al Sharpton, delivering the eulogy, called Penny’s actions a crime that exposed the brutal treatment of individuals in need.
“People keep criminalizing people that need help,” Sharpton said. “They don’t need abuse – they need help.”
The medical examiner has ruled Neely’s death a homicide caused by “compression of neck (chokehold)”. Neely’s family has called for his death to be prosecuted as murder.
The New York Post asked Penny whether he would act the same way if he found himself in a similar situation. He replied: “You know, I live an authentic and genuine life. And I would – if there was a threat and danger in the present.”
The Post went on to ask him whether he felt shame for any aspect of his conduct.
“I don’t, I mean, I always do what I think is right,” he said.
When the Post read excerpts of Sharpton’s eulogy to Penny and asked him to respond, he said he was “not sure” who Sharpton was. He said: “I don’t really know celebrities that well.”
Penny added he was remaining calm despite the media blitz that has engulfed him. “What’s the point of worrying about something?” he said. “Worrying is not going to make your problems disappear.”
Penny, who has been released from custody on $100,000 bail, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted as charged of second-degree manslaughter. In the wake of his arrest and prosecution, rightwing outlets and senior Republican politicians have rallied to his side. A “legal defense fund” on the Christian fundraising site GiveSendGo has so far raised $2.7m for Penny.
In the interview, his first since killing Neely, Penny described his actions on the day though he would not go into details about what precisely happened inside the train carriage. He said he had been at school where he is studying architecture and was returning to Manhattan to go to the gym and then back to his home at the time in the East Village.
All he would say about encountering Neely was that it was unlike anything he had experienced in the past. “This was different,” he said. “This time was much different.”
Penny told the Post that he was widely travelled, both as a marine and as a civilian, arguing that his experiences belied any suggestion he was racist. “I mean, it’s a little bit comical,” he told the newspaper.
“Everybody who’s ever met me can tell you, I love all people, I love all cultures. You can tell by my past and all my travels and adventures around the world. I was actually planning a road trip through Africa before this happened.”
