A subway commuter who helped an ex-Marine restrain an agitated man aboard a Manhattan subway last year testified that he tried to convince the veteran to loosen his grip around the man’s neck.

Jordan Neely was killed aboard an NYC subway train in May 2023 by a white marine who calls himself trying to play hero. BOSSIP reported extensively on the incident in which that white man, Daniel Penny, applied a chokehold for so long that Neely eventually stopped breathing and died in front of a train car of commuters.