• Penny, a 24-year-old former Marine, put Neely in a chokehold on the New York subway, inflicting his dying.
• Neely’s dying was dominated a murder by a health worker. 
• In a newly launched assertion, Penny’s attorneys stated their consumer “by no means meant to hurt” Neely.

Legal professionals for Daniel Penny, the Marine who positioned a homeless man named Jordan Neely in a chokehold on the New York subway final week, resulting in his dying, stated he “by no means meant” to trigger any hurt.

Penny, a 24-year-old scholar and Marine veteran “couldn’t have foreseen” Neely’s “premature dying,” attorneys Steven Raiser and Thomas Kenniff said in a statement, launched on Friday.

Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man, was yelling and behaving erratically on the subway on Monday when Penny took issues into his personal arms, inserting Neely in a chokehold and pulling him to the ground of the subway automotive. In a video of the incident, two different folks might be seen serving to Penny restrain Neely. 

Whereas the erratic habits scared some passengers, an eyewitness informed The New York Instances that Neely by no means tried to assault any passengers. Neely was yelling about being hungry and thirsty, and stated he did not thoughts “going to jail and getting life in jail” and was “able to die,” shortly earlier than Penny put him within the deadly chokehold, the witness informed the Instances. 

In an prolonged video launched Friday, one other passenger might be seen approaching Penny, saying you are “going to kill him” and that he must be involved a couple of “homicide cost.”

Penny’s legal professionals, nonetheless, stated Penny was solely defending himself.

“When Mr. Neely started aggressively threatening Daniel Penny and different passengers, Daniel, with the assistance of others, acted to guard themselves, till assist arrived,” the assertion from Penny’s attorneys stated. “Daniel by no means meant to hurt Mr. Neely and couldn’t have foreseen his premature dying.”

Raiser and Kenniff didn’t instantly reply to Insider’s request for remark.

The previous Marine may declare he acted in self-defense, although Neama Rahmani, the president of West Coast Trial Legal professionals and a former federal prosecutor, beforehand informed Insider it seemed to be “vigilante justice.” 

“The pressure used, for my part, was extreme below the circumstances,” Rahmani stated. “Personally, I feel self-defense is used far too typically on this nation to justify violence.”

New York Metropolis’s chief health worker dominated Neely’s dying a murder by compression to the neck, Insider beforehand reported. Penny has not been charged with any crimes, prompting protests in Manhattan.