Long Island native and U.S. Marine veteran Daniel Penny has been arrested and charged for killing Jordan Neely, a 30 year old man who suffered from severe mental health issues and frequent drug abuse. The incident involves Neely exhibiting aggressive and frightening behavior on a subway train in New York City near SoHo. Daniel Penny perceived that Neely’s behavior was a serious threat to those around him as he was shouting angrily and saying that he was going to kill someone. Witnesses say they feared for their safety, and in order to prevent the situation from coming to further violence to innocent passengers, Penny proceeded to put Neely into a neck restraint so that he could not harm anyone. After several minutes in this position Penny released Neely, and video footage shows that Neely did not get up from the floor afterwards. Paramedics arrived at the scene and felt a pulse, but they refused to administer mouth to mouth resuscitation to Neely due to potential drug use. Neely died shortly thereafter. 

Neely had previously been arrested several times and recently pleaded guilty to assaulting a 67-year-old woman in 2021 as she left a subway station. After this plea, he did not show up for his court date, leading to a warrant for his arrest which was still active at the time of his death. 

After Neely’s death, protestors were enraged, calling for the arrest of Penny on the grounds of both racial frustration as well as reckless behavior. Penny definitively claims he did not intend to kill Neely; he hoped to restrain him from harming others until police arrived. According to video evidence, Penny’s hold on Neely was not intended to choke or apply pressure, rather it simply prevented him from further aggressive movement. 

Neely’s unfortunate death, albeit certainly tragic, does not eliminate the reality of the danger he posed to the passengers on the train, which stem from a variety of mental health issues. Instead of an outrage about supposed racial injustice, mainstream media should be focused on the broken systems which failed Jordan Neely, especially in regards to his mental health issues, self-medicated with illegal substances. This is indicative of something larger at hand: a society which rejects its mentally ill and offers them neither asylum nor substantial help. Despite this being the primary necessary issue which deserves attention, protestors have fabricated anger in response to race, successfully provoking outrage around this topic. City Council speaker Adrienne Adams spoke into this false narrative, saying “Racism that continues to permeate throughout our society allows for a level of dehumanization that denies Black people from being recognized as victims when subjected to acts of violence.” 

By emphasizing race, New York officials such as Adams inflame and stir tensions regarding this topic instead of speaking to the void of our country’s mental health resources. There is no evidence that Penny’s behavior had anything to do with the color of Neely’s skin, and unless Penny’s motivations for restraining Neely are proven to have been based in a hatred of his race, it seems to be unjust to accuse him of anything other than attempting to de escalate a potentially dangerous situation. 

This incident denotes a rapidly increasing problem of dehumanization of the mentally ill. Yet again and again, there seems to be no standard for calling out those that incite anger around race when the root of the matter lies in the injustice and cruelty to disregard the mentally ill and necessitate civilians to protect others from the potential harms which the community fails to acknowledge and care about. It is time that we face the mental health crises of the population and offer substantial solutions for this epidemic encroaching on our society. 

Instead of help, members of our communities who struggle with mental illness are increasingly turning to drug use, just as Jordan Neely did. This man was not a victim of racism from Daniel Penny; rather, his erratic behavior caused by drug usage created an unsafe situation in which Penny felt the need to step in. Protestors argue that it was not Penny’s place to take action, and they are correct: Daniel Penny should not have had to de-escalate a potentially harmful experience which has placed him in the midst of a life altering public debate. Although the loss of Neely’s life is tragic and justice is owed, we believe that to be true in the sense of a life filled with opportunities and the resources he needed to handle his mental health and have the strength and capacity to not self-medicate with illegal substances. That is the real tragedy here, and Daniel Penny is not to blame.