The jury in the trial of Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran who put a Michael Jackson impersonator in a fatal chokehold on a New York subway last year, heard the defendant speak for the first time since the trial began when prosecutors played Mr. Penny’s interrogation video. 

“He was rolling around, going crazy. So I was trying to keep him from going nuts,” Mr. Penny is seen on the recording, as he speaks to New York police department detectives Brian McCarthy and Michael Medina, who interviewed him at the precinct shortly after the tragic incident occurred. 

Mr. Penny, 26, is charged with second-degree manslaughter and negligent homicide in the death of Neely, who was homeless and 30 years old on his final day. Mr. Penny has pleaded not guilty, and insists he did not mean to kill Neely, but was trying to protect himself and fellow passengers from what he perceived to be a dangerous man on the subway. 

On Thursday, assistant district attorney Dafna Yoran, who is prosecuting the case on behalf on Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, called Detective McCarthy to the witness stand and played the video, which was recorded when the detective and his college interviewed Mr. Penny inside a closed room at the 5th Precinct, which is located in Chinatown at downtown Manhattan.      

The 26 year old, who is originally from West Islip on Long Island, was a student living in the East Village at the time, and the Second Avenue on the F-line was the stop, where he would usually get off to go home. 

But on that Monday, May 1, 2023, he wanted to go to his gym on 23rd Street, he told the detective. “My class got out at 12. I was going to the gym,” Mr. Penny can be seen saying. It is the first time the jury got to hear the defendant speak since the trial began. Mr. Penny, who enters and exits the courtroom surrounded by security guards, dressed in slim-fitting suits, has not shown any kind of emotional reaction to the witness testimony, nor does he make any facial expressions.  

But on Thursday, the jury got to see a different image than the stone-faced  man they see in the courtroom. Talking to the detectives, wearing a tanned jacket and baseball cap, and chewing gum, Mr. Penny appeared to be younger and a lot less tense. 

At the time of the interrogation, the detective testified, Mr. Penny did not know that Neely had been pronounced dead at the hospital.   

Mr. Penny told the officers that Neely entered the subway at the same Second Avenue stop where Mr. Penny would normally get off to go home. “He got on diagonally from me,” Mr. Penny told the detectives, saying that  he was standing and not sitting down, and listening to music with headphones. But then he heard Neely aggressively shouting things like, “I’m gonna kill everybody… I can go to prison… I don’t care.“

“He wanted things,” Mr. Penny told the officers, and when they asked what he wanted, he said Sprite and Ginger Ale. 

Mr. Penny demonstrated to the officers the chokehold he put Neely in and told them, “I’m not trying to kill the guy. I’m trying to deescalate the situation… He was threatening people.” Mr. Penny said that Neely was “squirming” and “resisting” and he was trying to “hold him down” until the police arrived, and that he “wasn’t trying to injure him.”  

The trial will continue on Friday. The prosecution is expected to rest its case on Friday after finishing the testimony of the medical examiner, who ruled Neely’s death a homicide and who began her testimony on Thursday afternoon. 

It is unclear if the defense will call Mr. Penny to the witness stand.