Controversial "vigilante" NYC killing of autistic black man

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Geotz at least had a case he stood his ground (allegedly) that one or more of the 4 men he shot threatened him and they were armed. (I suspect he decided to go "Clint Eastwood" and that the men would have not physically touched him had he given his wallet, Geotz might have had a case but what he did was ultimately dangerous and questionable given he intended to kill and we don't know if there was probably cause.

On the other hand Neely was having some type of mental health episode on a train ranting at multiple passengers. There was no evidence a) he was carrying a weapon or b) he directed any threat to Penny. The bad news for Penny is everything was caught on video and there were multiple witnesses. Strap yourself in.

aniel Penny, the man who put Jordan Neely in a deadly chokehold nearly two weeks ago, was arraigned on a charge of manslaughter in Manhattan Criminal Court.

Penny, 24, will face up to 15 years in prison if he is found guilty. Supervising Judge Kevin McGrath set bail at $100,000 and ordered Penny to turn over his passports within 48 hours. Penny, who was dressed in a black suit and white button-down shirt, looked straight ahead with his hands in cuffs behind him. He barely spoke, except to answer a few basic questions.

Penny was escorted into a packed courtroom shortly after noon, as throngs of reporters waited outside the doors to the arraignment room and on the sidewalk across the street from the courthouse in Lower Manhattan.

Prosecutors asked for the bail conditions set by McGrath, and defense attorneys did not object – though they noted that Penny had voluntarily turned himself in after cooperating with law enforcement since the incident. They called him a “pillar of his community” and said he received multiple accolades while serving in the Marines, including a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and six ribbons.

The Manhattan District Attorney's office said Penny did not enter a plea Friday.

The official fund, generated by law firm Raiser & Kenniff, P.C. which is representing Penny, had raised more than $283,000 as of 11 a.m. Friday. Penny’s lawyers confirmed they set up the fund on GiveSendGo, and said it launched earlier this week.

Like many crowdsourcing sites, GiveSendGo supports various causes, such as medical bills and funeral expenses. It has promoted itself as “The #1 Free Christian Fundraising Site” and has also hosted funds for the Jan. 6 defendants and Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of homicide after killing two people during a 2020 protest in Wisconsin.

GiveSendGo has been host to several right-leaning crowdfunding campaigns in the past, among them legal defense funds for Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of all charges in a criminal trial after fatally shooting two people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020, amid protests against the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man who was left paralyzed.

It also established a Jan. 6 legal defense fund for people charged in connection with the 2021 Capitol riots as well as a “legal offense fund” for MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who promoted former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

“All Americans are concerned about election integrity,” said GiveSendGo co-founder Jacob Wells in a press release at the time. “Through this campaign Mike Lindell is giving them an opportunity to correct flaws in the system.”

In a statement provided to Gothamist Friday, Wells confirmed the site's religious philosophy, but said it supports causes across the political spectrum.

"GiveSendGo does not support right wing causes over left wing causes. GiveSendGo is a platform that allows campaigns, that are legal endeavors, from all sides of the political/ideological divide. In this moment in time when voices are amplified through social platforms, potentially damaging an individuals right to a fair and impartial trial, it is paramount to allow individuals the access to funds to afford them a rigorous defense and a presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law," Wells said. "This principle is fundamental to our constitutional republic and at GiveSendGo we will continue to stand for these fundamental freedoms while also sharing the Hope of Jesus with everyone who uses our platform. "

Ex-Marine Daniel Penny insisted to The Post Saturday that the chokehold killing of Jordan Neely had nothing to do with race — and everything to do with a broken system “that so desperately failed us.”

In his first public comments since the caught-on-video May 1 tragedy on an F train, Penny was both soft-spoken and stoic about being at the center of a political and racial firestorm, as he faces criminal charges that could send him to prison for up to 15 years.

“This had nothing to do with race,” said Penny, 24, sitting under a gazebo at Argyle Park in Babylon, not far from the Long Island beaches where he grew up surfing.

Dressed in black slacks, a blue zip-up jacket and beat-up Vans sneakers, Penny didn’t flinch when asked about Neely, a black, 30-year-old mentally ill homeless man.

“I judge a person based on their character. I’m not a white supremacist.

“I mean, it’s, it’s a little bit comical. 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.”

He is not a vigilante, Penny said. “I’m a normal guy.”

Penny said he could not go into detail about the events that then transpired because of his pending case, but he indicated it wasn’t like “anything I’d experienced before.”

This was different, this time was much different,” Penny said.

He paused and said again, “This time was very different.”

Penny said he was coming back to Manhattan from school and was en route to his gym on West 23rd Street when the chaotic encounter erupted. He did not want to name the school where he is studying architecture. He is now taking classes remotely.

“I was going to my gym,” Penny said. “There’s a pool there. I like to swim. I was living in the East Village. I take the subway multiple times a day. I think the New York transit system is the best in the world and I’ve been all over the world.”

When asked what he would say to the family of Jordan Neely, whose funeral was Friday, Penny looked somber, carefully choosing his words.

“I’m deeply saddened by the loss of life,” he said ” It’s tragic what happened to him. Hopefully, we can change the system that’s so desperately failed us.”

But when asked if he would take action again if he were in a similar situation, Penny nodded.

“You know, I live an authentic and genuine life,” Penny said. “And I would — if there was a threat and danger in the present …”

Does he feel he did anything to be ashamed of?

“I don’t, I mean, I always do what I think is right.”

The Post read Penny the statement made by the Rev. Al Sharpton at Neely’s funeral in Harlem Friday: “We can’t live in a city where you can choke me to death with no provocation, no weapon, no threat and you go home and sleep in your bed while my family has to put me into a cemetery.”

Penny nodded but said he was “not sure” who Sharpton is. “I don’t really know celebrities that well.”

He added that he does not watch the news. While he is aware of some of the negativity toward him — and said he was somewhat surprised by the media onslaught — he remained philosophical.

“If you’re faced with all these challenges, you have to remain calm. What’s the point of worrying about something, worrying is not going to make your problems disappear. I attribute this to my father and grandfather. They are very very stoic.”

Penny said he gave up social media years ago.

“I don’t follow anyone, and I don’t have social media because I really don’t like the attention and I just think there are better ways to spend your time. I don’t like the limelight.”

Penny, who has three sisters, said he has been surrounded by family and friends since the incident — and says his family is “hanging in there.”

“My mom is OK,” he said. “My sisters understand. They all support me.”

Penny described a relatively happy childhood growing up in the West Islip area. He was one of four children. His parents split up when he was young.

He said his two role models are his grandfathers, one of whom immigrated from Italy. The other grandfather is a first-generation American whose parents immigrated from Italy. He said he moved around a lot in the West Islip area because of his parents’ split but spent much of his formative years in a house right near the sea that his great-grandfather bought in the 1960s.

“My grandmother was raised there,” Penny said. “And then my father and his brothers were raised there. And then me and my sisters were able to grow up there. I’m very thankful. It is a beautiful house right [near] the water. We wouldn’t have been able to live that lifestyle on the water if it wasn’t for my family.”

Penny said his parents’ divorce was difficult but it had an upside.

“It brought me and my sisters closer. You know, we’re really close. I love my sisters. I have three of them. I’d do anything for them.”

Penny attended Suffolk Community College after graduating from West Islip High School where he was a lacrosse star – before enlisting in the Marines.

“Growing up in the wake of 9/11 and the terrorist attacks in a community full of firemen, first responders, police officers, it was like, I needed to serve my community in some way.”

Penny was deployed twice with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit.

We went to Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Greece and Spain,” he said. “We stayed off the coast of Iran for a bit. It was during that whole drone thing when they were shooting stuff down and stuff.”

Penny also went to Okinawa, Japan.

“I love to travel,” he said. “It really changed my perspective of the world for sure. I’m very thankful for being able to travel so much. Just the friendliness and welcoming of everyone and everywhere that I went to. And even before I deployed, you know, a lot of my friends I served with in my platoon came from all over a lot from Central America and Mexico, that, you know, I’ve opened up my, my eyes to their cultures and their perspectives.”

“I loved leading Marines and I love being around Marines,” he said of his service, where he eventually achieved the rank of sergeant. “I love helping people.”

Penny said he “didn’t try to become a leader” in the Marine Corps.

enny said he didn’t “try to become a leader” in the Marines. “I just did what I had to do. And I think growing up in a majority female household, you learn to lead in different ways from an early age. You learn to have compassion and humility — and disregard your perspective and show compassion to other people’s perspectives as well.”

Leaving the Marines was a “tough transition.”

“I really missed the interaction,” he said. “I missed the adventure, you know. So last summer, I decided to drive from New York and do a road trip through Mexico and Central America all the way to Nicaragua.”

Penny said he drove cross country and then down to Mexico, mostly by himself but with a friend part of the time. He got caught in a bad hurricane in an enchanted forest in Oaxaca, he said, and was trapped on a mountain for 48 hours.

“My car got stuck in a landslide,” Penny said. ”We had to hike and find a local village to come help dig us out. They were so friendly and kind. They really treated me like family.

“You hear so many bad things about these places,” Penny said. “I just wanted to see for myself, and thankfully I was proven right that these people were always welcoming and friendly and treated me like family everywhere.”

Penny said he was sitting in a coffee shop in Guatemala last year when he said he “suddenly felt overwhelmingly at home.”

“I was in Antigua, Guatemala, in a coffee shop. And I was just kind of overwhelmed by a sense of home even though I couldn’t be further from home, you know. So I just I attribute that that obviously, the locals there. They were very welcome — and also the structure I was sitting in. It was there I decided I wanted to study architecture and maybe help inspire other feelings of home for other people.”

Penny said he owes his calm demeanor to his many days on the water — and said he planned to surf Saturday afternoon after the interview to blow off steam.

“I’ve been surfing my entire life,” he said. “Growing up on the water, growing up at the beach, it’s what my father and grandfather did, too.”

A New York City grand jurors on Wednesday indicted Daniel Penny in the death of fellow subway rider Jordan Neely, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The death last month has been a lightning rod on issues of mental health, crime and race.

Penny, a 24-year-old Marine veteran, was indicted on a second-degree manslaughter charge in the May 1 confrontation with the homeless Neely, the sources said. A representative for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to comment to NBC News.

A spokesperson for Penny also declined to comment

Daniel Penny, the man who choked a homeless man to death last May on a New York City subway car, will stand trial beginning Oct. 8, a judge determined Wednesday.

The trial will take between four and six weeks, according to Judge Max Wiley.

Penny has pleaded not guilty to the charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in connection with Jordan Neely's death.

A court date has been scheduled for Sept. 17 for a hearing to suppress statements Penny made to investigators prior to his arrest.

A judge denied Penny's bid to dismiss his involuntary manslaughter case in January.