Witnesses from the subway train said they feared Jordan Neely but also described the horror of watching him die in a chokehold.
Several passengers on the F train became frightened as the desperate man threw down his jacket and screamed that he was hungry and did not care if he lived or died.
One woman buried her head in a friend’s chest and prayed for the subway doors to open. A journalist in his 50s said he went into “alert mode” as the man, Jordan Neely, ranted in the half-filled car.
But when another passenger, Daniel Penny, a former Marine, grabbed Mr. Neely and held him down in a chokehold, some on the train had a different fear: that Mr. Neely was the one in danger, according to testimony and a 911 call that was played in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday.
“He’s dying,” a woman told Mr. Penny, in words captured on a recording of the call. “You got to let him go.”
The harrowing warning was played during the second day of testimony in the trial of Mr. Penny, 26, who is facing charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
Prosecutors have accused him of killing Mr. Neely on the afternoon of May 1, 2023, when both men rode the uptown F train heading to the Broadway-Lafayette Street station in Manhattan. Mr. Penny, an architecture student who was on his way to the gym, has said he acted in defense of others on the train, but prosecutors said his actions became criminal when he refused to let go of Mr. Neely well after he went limp.
