The household implores Mayor Eric Adams to provide them a name reasonably than persevering with to criticize Neely.
The household of Jordan Neely, the 30-year-old Black man who was publicly choked to loss of life on a New York Metropolis subway, has condemned a press release launched by his killer, white 24-year-old Daniel Penny.
Penny’s assertion makes it clear that he and his authorized group are intent on persevering with to vilify Neely, placing the sufferer of a heinous killing on trial for his personal loss of life, Neely’s household stated.
The press launch by Penny and his authorized group, which was launched on Friday, claims — contrary to witness recollections — that Neely was “aggressively threatening” Penny and that Penny was merely appearing to “defend [himself]” when he held Neely in a chokehold that reportedly lasted for quarter-hour, finally killing him. “Daniel by no means meant to hurt Mr. Neely and couldn’t have foreseen his premature loss of life,” the assertion claimed.
Neely’s household condemned the assertion on Monday, calling it an “request for forgiveness.”
“Daniel Penny’s press launch will not be an apology nor an expression of remorse. It’s a character assassination, and a transparent instance of why he believed he was entitled to take Jordan’s life,” the household stated in a statement via their lawyers.
Of their launch, Penny’s group discusses how “‘good’ he’s,” whereas in “the subsequent paragraph he talks about how ‘dangerous’ Jordan was in an effort to persuade us Jordan’s life was ‘nugatory,’” the assertion by Neely’s household continues.
“The reality is, he knew nothing about Jordan’s historical past when he deliberately wrapped his arms round Jordan’s neck, and squeezed and saved squeezing,” the assertion goes on.
The household implored New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams to provide them a name and criticized the right-wing Democrat for his latest statements implying that Neely bore accountability for his personal loss of life.
Instantly earlier than Penny killed Neely final Monday, Neely had entered a New York Metropolis subway practice and informed passengers “I don’t have meals, I don’t have a drink, I’m fed up,” in keeping with witness Juan Alberto Vazquez, who posted video of the incident on-line.
Vazquez stated that Neely by no means interacted with Penny earlier than the ex-Marine approached Neely and commenced choking him. After the killing, Penny was taken in by police and launched with out prices shortly after. Health workers later discovered that Neely died attributable to compression of the neck, and officers have dominated his loss of life a murder. Protests have erupted in response to the killing.
A choice concerning prices for the killing is expected to be introduced this week.
Students and progressives have stated that Neely’s killing is emblematic of rising repression of poor and unhoused folks within the U.S., together with the rise of sanism — the oppression of these perceived as mentally sick — among the many far proper and liberal Democrats, lots of whom spent the times after Neely’s loss of life justifying extrajudicial killings of individuals experiencing homelessness or psychological well being points. Tellingly, as right-wing pundits rushed to place Neely on trial within the days after his killing, Daniel Penny’s id was withheld by officers.
Neely’s loss of life by the hands of a white veteran additionally highlights the “pathologization of Blackness,” as George Yancy famous in an interview for Truthout final week.
“Within the mad Black individual, all of the violences of modernity converge to provide loss of life. That’s what we witnessed on the New York subway,” stated Toronto Metropolitan College professor Idil Abdillahi, Yancy’s interview topic. “Add to that homelessness, and the mad Black individual with out property is the right anthesis of this violent brutal capitalist society — they should be made to vanish by all means mandatory.”
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