Daniel Penny, the acquitted subway vigilante, said he had no choice but to subdue a deranged Jordan Neely after the vagrant threatened to kill a straphanger on a Manhattan subway car last year.
The 26-year-old Marine Corps veteran was acquitted of manslaughter charges in Neely's death this week. He told Fox's “The Five” host Jeanine Pirro. He took the threat seriously and took action.
“I would never be able to live with myself with the guilt I would feel if someone were actually hurt or did what he threatened to do,” Penny said Wednesday. He spoke in an exclusive interview accompanying the full-length broadcast.
“I'm going to go to court a million times and be called names and hated, just to make sure one of them doesn't get hurt or killed,” he said.
Penny also said she felt “vulnerable” and in danger when she grabbed Neely and strangled her on a crowded Manhattan F train on May 1, 2023. .
“He's just threatening to kill people. He's threatening to go to prison forever, to go to prison for life,” he told Pirro. “And now I'm on the ground with him, lying on my back in a very vulnerable position.
“If I let him go, I'll be on my back now. He can just turn around and do what he tells me to do: kill, hurt.
“I'm not a confrontational person,” he added. “I don't really extend myself. This kind of thing is very uncomfortable. This kind of attention and limelight is very uncomfortable. I think I'm better off without it. I don't want any attention or praise.” I didn't, and I still don't want to.”
A teaser clip from the Fox interview aired on Tuesday, a day after Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg indicted Penny on manslaughter charges last year and acquitted him in the polarizing case.
With the jury deadlocked Friday, prosecutors asked the judge to throw out the manslaughter charge and continue deliberating the lesser murder charge, leading to Monday's not guilty verdict.
Mr Bragg has come under fire since the verdict from critics who say Mr Penny is a hero, not a villain, for protecting subway passengers from a violent and potentially dangerous vagrant.
Mr. Penny, without naming anyone, complained to Mr. Pirro about “selfish” officials who used the fatal encounter with Mr. Neely as part of a “political game.”
“This is their policy,” he said. “And I don't mean to be political, I don't really want to make enemies, although I think I already do.
“But these policies clearly aren't working and the public, the public, doesn't support them,” Penney added. “But their purpose is too great to agree that they are wrong.”
