No charges yet for man who put Black homeless New Yorker in chokehold on the F train

The death of a Black man who appeared to be suffering from mental illness on an F train on Monday is stirring outrage after a white man who had placed him in a chokehold wasn’t charged by the NYPD.

Dozens gathered on the Broadway-Lafayette subway platform Wednesday to protest the death of 30-year-old Jordan Neely. Chants of “Black lives matter” and “the homeless matter” echoed through the station, where Neely had been picked up by emergency workers and taken to a hospital, where he died, police said.

The incident is under continued investigation, according to the NYPD and the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Neely died by compression of the neck, or chokehold, according to the medical examiner's office, which ruled the death a homicide.

Neely was a Michael Jackson impersonator who had performed on subway platforms for years. On Monday afternoon he was riding the subway, complaining of hunger and thirst, according to journalist Juan Alberto Vazquez, who witnessed the incident and posted a video depicting part of the encounter on his Facebook page.

Vazquez wrote on Facebook that Neely yelled that he was tired — that he didn’t care if he went to prison and that he was ready to die. He said Neely took off his jacket and aggressively threw it on the floor of the subway car. Then, Vazquez wrote, a passenger on the train put Neely in a headlock.

Vazquez’s video shows the passenger, who has not been identified, on the ground with his arms wrapped around Neely’s neck. This went on, according to Vazquez, for 15 minutes. At one point Neely’s eyes closed as his legs flailed, and eventually he stopped moving entirely.

“The silence let us hear his breaths above the noise of the tires spinning over the tracks,” Vazquez wrote in Spanish on Facebook.

The video shows that two other men also tried to restrain Neely while he was in a chokehold as several onlookers stood by.

The incident touches on some of the most controversial and pressing issues facing the city and society more broadly, including safety in public places; the treatment of young Black men; the broadening mental health crisis; and the effectiveness of policing. And like notorious moments in the city’s past — particularly the 1984 subway shooting of four young Black men on the subway by a white man, Bernhard Goetz — the incident provoked conflicting reactions from New Yorkers.

Some who watched the video, which was first posted by The New York Post, saw shocking, unprovoked violence against a harmless man, indicating a fraying of societal cohesion and the demonization of the poor and mentally ill. Others viewed the vigilante’s efforts as appropriate amid growing worries about safety in a dangerous city and subway system.

State Sen. Julia Salazar, a Democrat, said in an interview that Neely was “lynched.”

“This man was not being violent, certainly not threatening anybody’s life, and this other individual on the train felt completely empowered to physically attack him, hold him down in full public view — in a full subway car — and end his life,” she said. “I use the language ‘lynching’ … [because] it seems that people were cheering it on, and felt that it was justified in some way to commit violence against this man, who appears to be most vulnerable person in that situation.”

Salazar said she doesn’t think Neely would have been perceived as a threat if he wasn’t Black. And she said that if the perpetrator were Black, he’d likely be in custody. She added that the incident indicates the influence of news and social media that portray homelessness and mental illness as crimes.

“The mayor’s office have, I think, sent the message for a long time now that people experiencing homelessness are a problem, rather than they are human beings,” she said, referring to the sweeps of homeless encampments and police removal of homeless people from the subway. “Homelessness is a policy failure, and we have a responsibility to repair that and address that in a humane way.”

On the other side of the political divide, John Catsimatidis, a wealthy and influential Republican talk show host, alleged on WABC 770 Tuesday that Neely had prior arrests and giddily played a clip from the 1974 movie “Death Wish”: “If the police don't defend us, maybe we ought to do it ourselves.”

According to city data, 15 homeless New Yorkers were murdered last year, down from 22 the year before.

The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Doug Cohen, a spokesperson for Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, said in an email that the office has “an ongoing investigation” but declined to share the name of the man who put Neely in a headlock, or any other information about the status of the case.

Bragg has already faced criticism from conservatives and the tabloids for his handling of another killing that many argued was a case of self defense. Last year, he charged Harlem bodega worker Jose Alba with murder for fatally stabbing a man during an argument. The decision to arrest Alba, who claimed he was being attacked, sparked backlash from bodega associations, and the DA ultimately dismissed the charges.

Alba’s attorney, Imran Ansari, said he hopes police and Bragg’s office conduct a thorough investigation before deciding whether to bring charges in this case.

“It’s the duty of law enforcement and prosecutors to make sure their arrest is good,” he said.

Ansari said New York law allows people to use deadly physical force if they believe their life or someone else’s could be in danger. But he said the self-defense statute isn’t a “get out of jail free card.”

“The law doesn’t allow for just anyone — based on someone who may be emotionally disturbed or acting out — to say, ‘Ya know what? I’m going to put this guy in a headlock to the extent it may result in his death,’” he said. “There has to be a good reason to do so.”

The activist group VOCAL New York released a statement blaming Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams for Neely's death, which VOCAL said was the result of fear-mongering rhetoric about crime and a lack of support for people experiencing homelessness and mental illness.

Dave Giffen, executive director with Coalition for the Homeless, also blamed Adams and Hochul for failing to provide enough mental health services for the public.

"The fact that someone who took the life of a distressed, mentally-ill human being on a subway could be set free without facing any consequences is shocking, and evidences the city’s callous indifference to the lives of those who are homeless and psychiatrically unwell,” he said in a statement.

When she was asked about the incident by reporters on Wednesday, Hochul called it “deeply disturbing.” She referred to new investments in mental health, and an increase in police officers on the subway.

Neely’s father lives in New York but could not be reached for comment. Neely’s mother was strangled to death by her partner in 2007, when Neely was 14. Her body was put in a suitcase and dumped on the side of a highway in the Bronx.

This story was updated with a ruling from the city medical examiner.