If you haven’t heard, there’s been what many are calling another George Floyd incident – only instead of a black man being killed by police, it was a Marine veteran. Thankfully, it seems as though this Marine is getting the defense he needs.
24-year-old Marine Daniel Penny was aboard a New York City subway car on May 1. Like all the other passengers in the car, he was minding his own business, just getting from one point in the city to another. But everything changed when 30-year-old and career criminal Jordan Neely entered the car and began making threats.
According to multiple eyewitnesses, Neely threatened the passengers around him, even using the words “bullet” and “kill” if anyone came near him.
And if it wasn’t for Penny and two other men, those threats might have become a reality. The trio took down Neely, with Penny placing him in a chokehold that eventually killed him.
According to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Penny deserves prison for manslaughter.
But to at least one other passenger, he deserves a medal for his heroic action.
The passenger, a woman Fox News described as in her sixties and “of color,” said that Penny was “a hero” for what he did and should be praised, not put on trial for murder. In this woman’s words, it was all “self-defense, and I believe in my heart that he saved a lot of people that day that could have gotten hurt.”
The woman explained that Penny was just riding the train when Neely began “spewing this rhetoric. He said, ‘I don’t care if I have to kill an F, I will. I’ll go to jail; I’ll take a bullet.'”
She said she was scared for her life and didn’t know how to escape the danger. Then, Penny and the other two men intervened.
And she said that it was very apparent by the look on Penny’s face that he didn’t want to hurt or kill Neely. But at the moment, that was the only real action to take. And he didn’t try to run from his crime either.
In her eyes, that makes him even more of a hero, a good person who “cared for people.”
Hopefully, her testimony will be enough to defend Penny’s actions in court.