He stepped on the train, and I immediately thought of Jordan Neely, the menacing man who was killed when he crossed paths with a vigilante who said he was trying to protect other passengers on the subway that day.
I don’t think I was the only one.
Like Neely, the man on the A train I had caught at 175th St. in Manhattan was loud and obnoxious. He was angry, and he was threatening passengers.
He seemed fixated on one rider in particular, a woman, who, like most of the passengers, appeared to be minding her own business. He held up his right hand and fixed his fingers like a gun, pointed in her direction and pulled the imaginary trigger.
“I should shoot you in the f–king head,” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear.
I didn’t know if he had a gun or not.
I didn’t want to find out.
I instinctively began to size him up. He was younger, but smaller. Determined, but distracted. Angry, but outnumbered.
I don’t know what I would have done if he had physically attacked me or anyone else standing or sitting by me on that train. But I know what I would not have done.
I would not have killed him.
I would not have dragged him down to the filthy floor and choked the life out of him.
Even if I had grabbed him, I wouldn’t have ignored the other passengers when they told me to stop.
“He’s dying. You’ve got to let him go,” one passenger shouted. “You’re going to kill him.”
But Daniel Penny didn’t let go, not for six minutes, not until Neely was as lifeless as any of the backpacks or briefcases passengers had carried on the train that day.
But Penny may never even spend a minute in jail for taking another man’s life.
A Manhattan jury has already deadlocked on the manslaughter charge against him, forcing Justice Maxwell Wiley on Friday to dismiss the top count.
The move clears the way for the jury to consider the other charge against Penny, criminally negligent homicide.
“What that means is you are now free to consider Count 2,” Wiley told the jury. “Whether that makes any difference or not, I have no idea.”
Wiley told jurors to take the weekend off and “think about something else for a while.”
But Neely’s family can’t think of anything else. They haven’t been able to since Neely took his last breath on the dirty floor of a subway car.
Two days before the manslaughter charge was dismissed, Neely’s father, Andre Zachery, filed a civil lawsuit against Penny, 26, accusing the former Marine and architecture student of causing his son’s death through “negligence, carelessness and recklessness.”
Zachery likely sees the writing on the subway car wall suggesting that Penny will never be held accountable for killing his son. It is also unlikely that he will ever get a dime from Penny.
The family never even got an apology.
The most that Penny would concede in the weeks after Neely’s death was that what happened was a “tragic incident.”
“Mr. Neely had a documented history of violent and erratic behavior, the apparent result of ongoing and untreated mental illness,” Penny said in a statement at the time.
All of that is true, but Penny didn’t know that when Neely stepped on the subway. All he saw was a man threatening passengers on the train — like the rest of us see almost every morning.
But witnesses said they never saw Neely with a weapon or threaten to use one. He didn’t touch anybody on the train.
Still, Penny grabbed him from behind and put him in a deadly chokehold.
The guy on my train got off two stops later. He didn’t shoot anybody. He didn’t hurt anyone.
The last time I saw him, he was muttering to himself as he walked along the platform at 145th St.
He was still alive.