New Book Revisits 2023 Subway Killing of Jordan Neely and the Systems That Failed Him

A new book revisits the May 1, 2023, death of Jordan Neely, an unhoused Black man who was killed on a New York City subway train. Journalist Anand Giridharadas spent more than two years investigating the case for Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City, seeking to explain what a widely shared video could not.

Neely had long drawn crowds with his Michael Jackson impersonation. On the day he died, he was in crisis, shouting threats and frightening other passengers. Daniel Penny, a white former Marine, put Neely in a chokehold for six minutes, and Neely died. The video of the encounter split the country. Some saw Penny doing what police were not there to do, while others saw Neely as another Black man whose life was treated as disposable.

Giridharadas said he wanted to tell a story that would reach "the heart of America." When tragic events become social media fodder, he said, "human beings become caricatures."

In December 2024, Penny was acquitted of criminally negligent homicide. The jury hung on a second degree manslaughter charge, and prosecutors then dismissed it. Within days, Vice President-elect JD Vance invited Penny to the Army-Navy game alongside President-elect Trump. A Silicon Valley venture capital firm later gave him a job.

Giridharadas argues that both men felt let down by the systems that should have protected them. Neely, he said, had felt abandoned for a long time and had reason to. Penny claimed he felt abandoned because law enforcement was absent and because systems had allowed Neely to be in that subway car in that condition, rather than receiving better care.

In an interview, Giridharadas described Neely's history with the justice system. It began with minor offenses tied to homelessness, such as jumping turnstiles and sleeping rough, and later grew more serious, including assaults. Neely was sent to a rehabilitation facility in the Bronx under an alternative to incarceration program that prosecutors and defense lawyers had agreed to. One day he walked out. In April 2023, weeks before his death, he behaved erratically at Coney Island. Outreach workers and police interacted with him, but neither recognized that he was wanted on a warrant or that their agency knew him well.

On Penny, Giridharadas pointed to his upbringing in West Islip, Long Island, describing such towns as shaped by white flight and comparing them to "middle-class refugee camps" from New York City. He said he could not know what was in Penny's heart but did not sense sadness or remorse, noting that Penny did not appear curious about what had happened to Neely even in bodycam footage and his interrogation.

Giridharadas said Penny seemed ideologically blank even as supporters projected ideas onto him, and that Penny embraced the attention and the money. He noted that Penny, who he believes has not graduated from college, was made a partner on the American dynamism team at Andreessen Horowitz, which invests in startups working on weapons systems and drones.

He also drew a parallel with Luigi Mangione, accused in the killing of UnitedHealthcare's Brian Thompson. During Penny's jury deliberations, he said, a similar argument emerged on the left that Mangione had stepped into a void left by a cruel healthcare system. Black Lives Matter activist Hawk Newsome said that if there are going to be vigilantes, "we need Black vigilantes." Giridharadas called the shared refrain across political lines, that the system is rigged and someone must step up, perhaps the last common thread in American life.