Expert: Daniel Penny Didn’t Kill Jordan Neely

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Marine Daniel Penny did not kill serial criminal Jordan Neely when he put Neely in a chokehold to protect other subway passengers, an expert medical witness testified on Thursday.

Dr. Satish Chundru, who is a forensic pathologist in Texas, testified before the Manhattan Supreme Court regarding the autopsy records and video evidence surrounding the death of homeless criminal Neely after he threatened other train passengers and Penny tried to restrain him. Like in the case of George Floyd, evidence shows Neely might not actually have died from suffocation, but rather from drug- and schizophrenia-related complications.

Neely had been arrested 44 times before his sudden death, including for multiple assaults and attempted child abduction. He was homeless and had an arrest warrant out for him when his threatening words and actions on the Manhattan subway caused Penny to subdue him with a chokehold. Neely subsequently died, but Dr. Chundru says he believes that Neely’s death wasn’t caused by the chokehold.

The New York Post reported that when Penny’s attorney asked if his client had choked Neely to death, Dr. Chundru answered emphatically, “No, the chokehold did not cause death.” Rather, the doctor added, “the combined effects of sickle cell crisis, the schizophrenia, the struggle and restraint, and the synthetic marijuana” caused Neely’s death. The doctor said that schizophrenia has an “increased risk of sudden cardiac death,” which apparently happened to Neely.

Chundru said that he has been a medical examiner for Florida and Texas county governments and testified on Penny’s behalf about two “medically recognized chokeholds” and why evidence indicates that Neely did not die from either. The Post reported that Chundru detailed the blood choke and the air choke and described what he deemed “discrepancies” in the medical records for Neely, who had a history of both drug abuse and mental illness. These discrepancies included neck bruises and “almost negligible” bleeding spots on Neely’s eyelids. The doctor said all the symptoms he examined were not consistent with a fatal chokehold.

The city medical examiner Cynthia Harris asserted that Neely died of asphyxiation, insisting that she wouldn’t alter her findings even if it was discovered that Neely had enough drugs in his system “to put down an elephant.”

Harris testified earlier this week that she and the other doctors at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, including the chief, believed that Neely’s death was caused by “asphyxia,” consistent with being choked, after seeing a journalist’s video of the homeless man “dying” with Penny’s arm wrapped around his neck.

Neely’s attorneys called in a hopefully less biased and more scientific medical expert in Chundru. The doctor did concede under cross-examination that some of Neely’s symptoms were consistent with asphyxiation, while others weren’t. “He also testified that he’d seen deaths caused by K2 toxicity alone. Neely … had the synthetic marijuana in his system at the time of his death, trial evidence has shown,” the Post explained.

The media vilified Penny because he is white, whereas Neely was black, outrageously trying to make the case about race. Multiple eyewitnesses testified to Neely’s threatening behavior before Penny attempted to restrain him with the chokehold, the Post reported. Penny’s lawyers argued that Penny clearly acted to protect other people from the serial criminal and did not intend to kill Neely.