Following Daniel Penny’s acquittal in the charges brought against him over the death of Jordan Neely, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has invited the former Marine to start fresh in the Sunshine State after the intense New York City trial. Penny’s life was turned upside down in May 2023 when Neely, a mentally ill homeless man, boarded the subway and began behaving in a violent and threatening manner toward passengers.
As a man, Neely felt called to protect the innocent women and children who were possibly in danger on the subway. Therefore, Penny acted swiftly to restrain Neely, placing him in a choke hold, after which he unfortunately died. The 26-year-old former Marine maintained that he only sought to protect those around him on the train, which the testimony of several witnesses corroborates.
Last week, Penny was found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide over a year later. Following the acquittal, author Ryan James Girdusky took to X, asking, “Now where does Daniel Penny go to get his life back?” Gov. DeSantis responded, “Florida.” Conservatives have celebrated the outcome of Penny’s case, similar to Kyle Rittenhouse’s, as it sets a strong precedent for self-defense despite the agenda of woke district attorneys.
Penny recently spoke to Fox News, explaining his though process during the harrowing incident with Neely. “He was just threatening to kill people. He was threatening to go to jail forever, go to jail for the rest of his life. And now where I’m on the ground with him, I’m on my back in a very vulnerable position. If I just would have let go now, he’d turn,” he said.
“I’ll take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed,” he said, explaining his valiant actions on the subway. Calling out the polices which led to the altercation in the first place, he said, “These are their policies that are, and I don’t mean to get political, I don’t really want to make any enemies, really although I guess I have already. But I mean, these are their policies that have clearly not worked, that the people, the general population, are not in support of, yet their egos are too big just to admit that they’re wrong.”
The American Tribune further reported on Penny further describing the what took place in May 2023. “I got out of class around 2:15, I took the J Street. I was at J Street Metro Tech took the Uptown half train at Second Avenue. A man came on, stumbled on. He appeared to be on drugs. The doors closed, and he ripped his jacket off and threw it at the people sitting down to my left,” he said. “I was listening to music at the time he was yelling, so I took my headphones out to hear what he was yelling, and the three main threats that he repeated over and over was, ‘I’m going to kill you. I’m prepared to go to jail for life, and I’m willing to die.’”
Penny added, “You know, this is a this was a scary situation. And Mr. Neely came on. He was, he was threatening, I’m six two, and he was taller than me. So it was, there’s a common misconception that Marines don’t get scared, or actually taught one of our core values is courage and courage … courage is not the absence of fear but how you handle fear. You know, I was scared for myself, when I looked around I saw women and children. He was yelling in their faces. Say, saying these threats.”
Watch Jessica Tarlov’s surprising opinion on Penny below:
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