Subway chokehold trial: 'I thought I was going to die,' witness tells jury at Daniel Penny trial

A Nike marketing executive testified Thursday in the Daniel Penny fatal chokehold trial that she thought she would be killed by Jordan Neely after the homeless man made "satanic" threats to her and other passengers on the subway train.

Penny, originally of West Islip, stands trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan on charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide for putting Neely, a Michael Jackson impersonator who made money busking in the subway system, in a reverse headlock that cut off the oxygen and blood to his brain until he died, according to prosecutors.

On Thursday, two subway passengers testified that they believed Neely would have turned violent, perhaps deadly, on May 1, 2023, when he boarded the F train at Second Avenue around 2:30 p.m. and started shouting threats.

"This is the first time in my life where I took a moment because I thought I was going to die," said Caedryn Schrunk, a senior brand manager for the running shoe company.

Originally from the Midwest, Schrunk testified that she rode the subway system frequently and had experienced outbursts on the train before, but this day was different.

"He had said, ‘I don’t care if I die, I don’t care if you die. Lock me up for life,’ very, very, very aggressive threats," Schrunk told the jury. "Everything he was saying was so believable ... It was from his heart. It was a satanic belief in what he was saying was going to be his actions."

High school student Morielyn Sanchez, 18, of Harlem, nervously told the court that Neely had his fists balled up at his waist, and she believed that he would "put hands on people."

"I got scared myself that he was going to attack somebody, and that’s when I called 911," she told the court.

Both women, who were on the train when Neely entered at Second Avenue, said he threw his jacket on the ground and began screaming about being hungry.

Schrunk said a woman sitting on the bench seat across from her on the standing-room-only train tried to shield her child using her stroller "in anticipation of what was to come." She said that as Neely moved down the train, he never touched any of the passengers and never showed a weapon.

"I truly felt he was likely armed based on the threats that he made," she said. Prior testimony from responding officers showed that Neely was unarmed and carried only an unwrapped muffin in the pocket of his jacket.

Schrunk said her normal strategy for handling these types of subway disruptions was to move to the other side of the train or move to a different car, but in this case she said all the passengers "froze."

That’s when, she said, Penny came up from behind Neely and wrapped his arm around his neck and dropped to the floor.

"They went down in a really controlled manner," she said.

Manhattan prosecutors admit that Penny intended to protect the other passengers from Neely, but say that the Long Island man, who trained in defensive restraints in the Marine Corps, used a grip that he knew could be fatal and he held it for six minutes, which caused Neely’s death.

Schrunk testified that she saw Neely moving on the subway floor long after the F train pulled into the Broadway-Lafayette station and was held there until police arrived.

"The threat was still there," she said. "We didn’t know if he had a gun, we didn’t know if he had a knife. If he had gotten up, we don’t know what he would have done."

Not all the witnesses in court on Thursday considered Penny a protector.

Another witness, Johnny Grima, an unemployed homeless advocate who lives in the Bronx, called Penny a "murderer." He said he felt intimidated by the Marine veteran and believed that he had been cavalier with Neely's life.

"I didn’t like the way they handled him once on the floor," Grima said.

Defense attorney Thomas Kenniff objected to the use of the term "murderer" and requested a mistrial at the end of the day's testimony, and said the prosecution had been "utterly reckless and negligent" in eliciting testimony from Grima and NYPD Officer Oswaldo Ortiz.

Ortiz testified that Penny had bonded with another officer about having been in the military and expressed an interest in joining the NYPD.

Kenniff said this reinforced a "white vigilante narrative" that has been presented by civil rights advocates and criminal justice reformers.

"There is no longer any way my client can get anything resembling a fair trial at this point, given what has happened over the last few days," Kenniff told the judge.

State Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley said he understood the defense lawyer’s argument, but denied the motion.

The case will continue on Friday.