Prosecutors on Friday called more eyewitnesses in the trial of Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran who put a Michael Jackson impersonator, Jordan Neely, in a fatal chokehold on a New York subway last year. One woman testified that Neely scared the “living daylights out of everybody.” Pleased defense attorneys said prosecutors were helping prove their case.       

“I was worried that I might not be able to submit my bill to my client, because the prosecution is doing it all for us. It’s certainly not because they wanted to be helpful. The facts are the facts,” defense attorney Thomas Kenniff told reporters outside Manhattan criminal court on Friday. 

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, who brought the second-degree manslaughter and negligent homicide charges against Mr. Penny, called three more witnesses who were in the same subway car where the tragic encounter between Mr. Penny and Neely took place on May 1st, 2023. Witnesses described to the jury what they saw, what they heard, and how they felt. 

“It felt very scary,” Lory Sitro testified. The mother of two, who works as a research director at an ad agency, was coming from Brooklyn and headed to Manhattan to take her five year old son to a therapy session, when suddenly the doors at the Second Avenue stop opened, and Neely, a street performer who was homeless at the time, boarded the northbound F-train.

“The train doors opened at 2nd Avenue,” Ms. Sitro said. “I didn’t notice until ten seconds after the train left the station, on my right there was a man who started shouting things … He was shouting in people’s faces: ‘I don’t have water, I don’t have food, I don’t have a home, I wanna hurt people, I wanna go to Rikers.’”

Neely meant the notorious New York City jail on Rikers Island. Ms. Sitro described the tone of Neely’s voice as “increasingly loud,  increasingly threatening, belligerent and unhinged.” She said, “I actually took the stroller out to create a barrier between him and my son.”  

“My son started asking me questions, why did he wanna go to prison?” Ms. Sitro remembered. “So I was splitting my attention between keeping my eye on him and answering my son’s questions.”  

An assistant district attorney, Jillian Shartrand, one of the prosecutors on the case, asked if Neely carried any weapons, and if he was touching people. Ms. Sitro said he wasn’t. But when questioned by the defense, she said Neely was “getting up in people’s faces,” and that she had been taking “the subway for over 30 years” but this situation “was different…I felt concerned… I was very scared… I did not feel safe.”  

“Between the ranting,” Ms. Sitro said, referring to Neely’s outcry, “I saw a man get up, and from behind, hold him around the chest area.” She demonstrated to the court that Mr. Penny, whom she had identified, wrapped his arms around Neely’s chest and neck. “I felt very relieved,” the witness said of Mr. Penny’s action, “because I was scared for my son… It’s not like you can take a five year old and run to the next train car, five year-olds don’t move very quickly.”  

The next eye-witness, a young man named Dan Couvreur who works at a start-up company and was on his way to his shared working space, told the jury that after Neely “stormed into the subway car and threw his jacket down,” which landed “pretty close” to his feet, he wanted “to get away, as far as possible.” 

“I was pretty terrified. My heart was beating. I moved locations to distance myself,” Mr. Couvreur testified. He also confirmed that Neely did not physically touch anyone and that he did not carry any weapons. 

Interestingly, Mr. Couvreur told the defense attorney that while Mr. Penny, who was holding Neely in the chokehold, he asked for help. Mr. Couvreur testified that once on the ground, Neely “continued to resist,” using his elbows, and also kicking with his legs. 

“It was very much a struggle.” Mr. Couvreur said, and “Mr Penny did not control the situation.”  

“Did you in fact hear Danny, asking for help,” defense attorney Mr. Kenniff asked the witness.  

“I believe he asked for help when he got into the station. It looked like he was asking for help because he couldn’t get Neely under control.”  

Alethea Gittings, who took the stand after Mr. Couvreur, said she approached Mr. Penny on the subway on that day, after the police had arrived, to thank him for protecting her. She also described Neely as being “very loud, very menacing, very disturbing,” and told the jury, “I was scared shitless.” 

Body camera footage by police officers that was played in court showed Ms. Gittings telling police officers, “I think this guy was on drugs… You know, because when he came in, he was unbelievably off the charts. He scared the living daylights out of everybody.’’

She agreed with the young man, who testified before her, that Neely was “fighting” when Mr. Penny held him in the chokehold, that “he was trying to get loose.” 

Ms. Gittings stayed until the EMS came, and testified that she saw Neely “move” when “they put him up on the gurney, I saw Mr. Neely move a little, just a little, and they sort of secured him, and they was checking him, and eventually took him up the stairwell.”

She also said that after she thanked Mr. Penny, he asked her to go to the police station and make a statement, which she did.  

“Mr. Penny asked me to give a statement. Because I came back to thank him. And that’s when Mr. Penny asked me to speak to the police,” Ms. Gittings said. 

After Friday’s court session, the defense team spoke to reporters outside the courthouse. 

“It’s hard to argue when you hear from this many individuals, right?” Mr. Kenniff said. “Different walks of life, different areas in the city, different genders, different ethnicities, different races, all virtually uniform saying that not only was I scared, but I have never been this scared before. How many witnesses have we heard from in the last 40 hours that said, I am a lifetime subway rider, as New Yorkers we see everything, I have never seen anything like this, nothing ever frightened me as much as Jordan Neely frightened me that day. That’s really what it’s all about.” 

“How relieved were you when this young man, our client, stood up, when other people ran away, including other males by the way, stood up and did something, did something to protect that elderly African American woman, did something to protect that mother and her child… How did you feel? I felt relieved,” Mr. Kenniff said, referring to the witnesses who had testified on Friday. 

“I believe in the prosecution, I believe in New York City,” Christopher Neely, the uncle of the victim later told reporters after the defense attorneys had left.

When reporters asked him how he felt about Neely’s threatening behavior, the elder Mr. Neely said that,  “If I stomp on the ground and you’re not prepared for it, that could be startling and especially words that come after that. But needless to say… that doesn’t give anyone the right to basically just come up to someone and just choke them from behind, especially when you could tell everything was directed to him,” Mr. Neely said.

“It was never directed to anyone else. I want to die. I’m hungry. I want some water, you know, I want to go back to jail,” he added, citing the words witnesses had said they heard his nephew say. “It was not like, I want to kill you. Nobody testified saying that he wanted to kill anybody on the train.”