Once upon a time in America, Jordan Neely was that quintessential New York character who acted out life’s mixtures of dreams and disappointments on that giant stage underneath Broadway: the city’s subway system and its 2.4 million bedraggled commuters. As a young 20-something a decade ago, Neeley’s Michael Jackson’s shtick — moonwalking in the Thriller-era military jacket, “Billie Jean” blasting from a boom box as an express train barreled under Manhattan — brought bemused smiles and an occasional whoop from jaded straphangers.
But Neely was 30 now, still calling the subway his home as the music faded in a city where, as his idol once sang, “there’s demons closin’ in from every side.” A Queens subway rider named Emon Thompson told the New York Times she saw Neely a couple of times recently as she took the Manhattan-bound F train, and he seemed highly distraught. She recalled: “He said he needed help and kept repeating the words, ‘food, shelter, I need a job.’ ... I could tell he was at his wit’s end, you know?”
That end came quickly on Monday afternoon. Aboard a crowded F train underneath the East Village, Neely reportedly declared: “‘I don’t have food, I don’t have a drink, I’m fed up ... I don’t mind going to jail and getting life in prison. I’m ready to die.” The rider who related those words to the Times, freelance journalist Juan Alberto Vazquez, filmed the shocking moments that came next after Neely reportedly threw his black coat onto the floor.
A young man, unnamed but described as a 24-year-old ex-Marine, grabbed Neely and — possibly drawing on his military training — placed Neely in a choke hold. The homeless man could not speak but flailed his arms, and another passenger intervened — not to free Neely, but to hold him down. Other passengers watched. Vazquez later posted a video that runs for four-and-a-half minutes — although he claimed the encounter lasted as long as 15 minutes, which, if true, would be nearly six minutes longer than when Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin infamously suffocated George Floyd with his knee.
Neely lapsed into unconsciousness, and the EMT responders who arrived at the Broadway-Lafayette station were unable to revive him. On Wednesday, the New York medical examiner stated what was clear to anyone who watched the video: Neeley’s death was a homicide. And yet the cops of Mayor Eric Adams’ “tough-on-crime” New York City questioned Neely’s killer and then allowed him to go home and sleep in his own bed.
Police haven’t released the name of the man who committed this homicide, but then they haven’t officially released Neely’s name, either, in this incident that much of official New York seems to have hoped would fade away, like music from a boom box. But too many outraged Americans are already saying his name — Jordan Neely — and wondering why this man, whose behavior was clearly disturbing but had done nothing violent, was summarily executed as no one intervened to help.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/pmn/5LPWO2CIOEBKRH3TNXRIZNFDCE.jpg "New York police officers administer CPR to a man at the scene where a fight was reported on a subway train, Monday, May 1, 2023, in New York. A man suffering an apparent mental health episode aboard a New York City subway died on Monday after being placed in a headlock by a fellow rider, according to police officials and video of the encounter. Jordan Neely, 30, was shouting and pacing aboard an F train in Manhattan, witnesses and police said, when he was taken to the floor by another passenger.")
New York police officers administer CPR to a man at the scene where a fight was reported on a subway train, Monday, May 1, 2023, in New York. A man suffering an apparent mental health episode aboard a New York City subway died on Monday after being placed in a headlock by a fellow rider, according to police officials and video of the encounter. Jordan Neely, 30, was shouting and pacing aboard an F train in Manhattan, witnesses and police said, when he was taken to the floor by another passenger.Read morePaul Martinka / AP
In spite of initial silence and inaction, and then the predictable twisting by politicians and the media into their prewritten narratives about urban homelessness and crime, Jordan Neely is fast becoming one of those names — like Emmett Till or Kitty Genovese or Bernhard Goetz or Trayvon Martin or George Floyd. In some way, these names become shorthand for how we as Americans treat our fellow Americans, tainted by all the toxic ingredients of prejudice, fear, and misguided rage that drag us down as a society, again and again.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/pmn/KCUAPIAXCJGV5N3JJ5ADZHB5TM.jpg "Jordan Neely supporters during a vigil in the Broadway-Lafayette subway station on Wednesday, May 3, 2023, in Manhattan, New York.")
