The court released the New York Police Department’s initial interrogation of Daniel Penny on Wednesday, showing detectives did not tell him Jordan Neely had died after Penny placed him in a chokehold in a subway.
The video begins with Penny seemingly unaware he was under any suspicion or that he would be arrested, and he can be seen smiling and talking with the detectives about his time in the Marine Corps. The detectives, Michael Medina and Brian McCarthy, then walk Penny through his Miranda warning – never telling him Neely died.
Parts of the video have been used in pretrial hearings, Fox News reported, but the full 30-minute interrogation was not released until it became part of the public record during Penny’s trial.
Penny waived his right to an attorney and spoke with the detectives for 25 minutes after the Miranda warning, walking them through his day on the F train that led to him putting Neely in a chokehold.
“Some guy came in, and he’s like with his jacket off and he’s like, ‘I’m gonna kill everybody. I’m gonna go to prison forever. I don’t care,'” Penny says in the video.
Penny then tells the detectives that he asked the person next to him to hold his phone, and he removed his earbuds before getting behind Neely and placing him in the hold.
“I just kind of, like, grabbed him from behind,” Penny said.
“Because he was acting like a lunatic, like a crazy person,” he continued. “So, and he was rolling around the floor. And at that point, the train stopped. I was like, ‘Someone call the cops,’ and he’s still, like rolling around, still going crazy. I had two other guys kind of help me just kind of keep him from going nuts. And yeah, that’s when you guys came.”
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Later in the interrogation, Penny said he wouldn’t normally get involved in such a situation but felt the need to step up because of Neely’s threats to other passengers.
“He’s like, ‘If I don’t get this, this and this, I’m going to go to jail forever,'” Penny said. “He was talking gibberish, you know, but these guys are pushing people in front of trains and stuff.”
Penny was referring to the more than 20 people who had been shoved onto subway tracks in New York City, according to Fox 5 New York. Many of the suspects were homeless and mentally ill.
On Wednesday, jurors heard from forensic psychiatrist Dr. Alexander Bardey, who reviewed thousands of pages of Neely’s medical records dating back to 2015, Fox News reported, and told jurors that Neely had been hospitalized more than a dozen times for psychotic episodes and for abusing synthetic marijuana.
Bardey testified that Neely had delusions that deceased rapper and actor Tupac Shakur – who has been dead for nearly 30 years, was using him to “change the world.” Neely also heard the “devil’s voice.”
Numerous witnesses have also testified that they feared Neely, with some even thanking Penny for stepping in to protect them.
Penny faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of manslaughter or up to 4 years if he’s convicted on the lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide.
Here’s a clip from the interrogation courtesy of The Free Press: