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He was hungry and he was shouting on a train, and he was frightening people, and he had not touched anybody. Another passenger put him in a chokehold and held it. Jordan Neely died on the floor of an F train. New York City. 1 May 2023. A northbound F train. Jordan Neely was thirty. He had been a Michael Jackson impersonator — he worked Times Square and the subway for years, and there is footage of him dancing that a lot of New Yorkers recognised when they saw his face in the news. His mother was murdered when he was fourteen. Her body was found in a suitcase. He never recovered from it. He had spent years in and out of homelessness and psychiatric care, and he was on a city list of people considered most at risk on the streets. On that train he was shouting. Witnesses described him saying he was hungry, thirsty, tired of it, that he did not care if he went to jail. Accounts agree he did not physically attack anyone. Daniel Penny, a former Marine, came up behind him and put him in a chokehold. He held it for several minutes, including after Neely stopped moving. Other passengers helped restrain his arms. A bystander filmed much of it. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide by compression of the neck. Penny was charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. In December 2024, after the top charge was dismissed during deliberations, a jury acquitted him of the remaining count. This case split the country and we are not going to pretend it did not. Some people saw a frightened carriage and a man who acted. Others saw a homeless Black man in crisis, killed on the floor of a train, by somebody who was not in danger. Here is the fact nobody disputes, and we will leave it as the whole post. Jordan Neely said he was hungry. He had been saying some version of it for years, to a city that had him on a list of people it knew were in danger and did not reach.