Imagine this: New Yorkers are riding the subway when a deranged man barges into the car and starts screaming that he’s going to kill people. He looks crazed, clearly on drugs—lots of them.
If you were riding that train, you might have thought you were about to die a violent death, and some of the passengers thought exactly that. A mother with her young son hid behind a stroller. A high school student prayed as the man yelled, "Someone is going to die today!" and lunged at commuters.
Enter a strapping Marine vet to take the psycho down. Which he does efficiently, effectively. He holds him until police (eventually) arrive, and keeps the other passengers out of danger. When he lets go of the assailant, the guy is still breathing.
His name is Daniel Penny and he’s an American hero, right?
No, not in Progressive World.
The disturbed guy later died at the hospital—after he had been administered Narcan, interestingly—and Penny was arrested and eventually charged with second-degree manslaughter. Now he is on trial in a courtroom in Manhattan.
This type of story is all too common in today’s American cities.
Daniel Penny is a hero. He stepped in to protect women and children from a violent madman with multiple felonies who was threatening to kill innocent bystanders.
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) November 16, 2024
Free Daniel Penny. pic.twitter.com/3qiuYTgW78
On Tuesday, Penny’s mother testified and said she tried to instill values of “honesty, humility and kindness” in her son. Two men who have seen his character up close and personal told the assembled what they knew to be true:
Defense lawyers also called to the stand two Marines who served with Penny — who is accused of putting berserk straphanger Jordan Neely in a chokehold and “recklessly” fatally restraining him on an F train in May 2023.
Penny’s former platoon sergeant, Nolan Drylie, told jurors that Penny received a humanitarian medal during his time in the Marine Corps.
Penny’s conduct as a Marine was “beyond reproach,” he testified.
When Drylie was asked whether Marines are taught to “value human life or devalue it,” he responded, “Value it.”
Gunnery Sgt. Nathaniel Dunchie, who is still on active duty, was asked whether Penny embodies the Marine Corp’s “values.”
“Yes, absolutely,” Dunchie responded.
“I knew everything I asked him to do would be done correctly and the right way.”
And yet this man faces 15 years in the slammer.
Here’s who Penny was protecting the passengers from:
The defense spent the afternoon also questioning forensic psychiatrist Alexander Bardey, who told the court he’d reviewed thousands of pages of medical records from Neely.
Neely reported to doctors during his 2021 hospitalization for schizophrenia that he’d heard the “devil’s voice,” according to a copy of a record shown to jurors.
A witness earlier in the trial described Neely’s rant on the subway car that day as “satanic,” and other straphangers have said they feared for their lives and for their small children during the dead man’s rampage through the train.
And yet Penny faces 15 years behind bars.
I’m not even going to present the prosecution’s case here because, frankly, I don’t give a damn what they have to say. We know that many of the passengers on that train called Penny a hero because they said so. Jordan Neely was still alive when Penny let him go. Neely had at least 42 arrests between 2019 and 2021, and his charges included just about every type of theft you could think of—as well as three unprovoked subway assaults on women.
Yet there he was, wandering the streets and the subways.
And the 26-year-old Marine vet who served his country faithfully faces a decade and a half in prison.
Who and what is at fault here? It’s not Daniel Penny. You could even argue that it’s not even Jordan Neely.
It’s woke politics and progressive policies. It’s leftist politicians and soft-on-crime, George Soros-backed prosecutors like Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg—whose office filed this abomination—who put those passengers in danger. Who put Penny in a position where he had to use his hard-earned skills to protect his fellow New Yorkers.
What in the hell was Neely doing out on the streets?
It’s this criminal-coddling, police-hating progressive agenda that’s brought this kind of tragedy to the streets of so many of our big cities. Do you know who else was psychotic, had a long rap sheet, and was walking around freely on the streets of Manhattan? A homeless man named Ramon Rivera, who on Monday went on a random stabbing spree across the Big Apple, killing three innocent people for no coherent reason at all.
A complete failure of the system on virtually every level.
This psycho who stabbed 3 people to death in NYC was let out of jail just a few weeks ago and has a long criminal history.
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 19, 2024
Meanwhile Daniel Penny is on trial for protecting passengers from a lunatic on a subway.
The justice system is completely broken. pic.twitter.com/BfEZgBgxPQ
There are some signs of sanity emerging. Here in Los Angeles, we finally voted out our despicable district attorney, George Gascón, whose experiment with “reformative justice” helped turn the city into a place that feels like a lawless loonie bin. Meanwhile, up North, as RedState's Jennifer Oliver O’Connell writes, the “Bay area is also divesting itself of the horrific Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price.” Even voters in the notoriously deep blue Golden State want a change. O’Connell also wrote about another important thing that occurred on November 5: “California has resoundingly voted 'Yes' on Prop. 36, which reforms Prop. 47, a decades-old law that was supposed to usher in criminal justice reform but instead encouraged the escalation of crime.”
This is a big deal.
Looks Like Los Angeles Is Going to Jettison Infamous Woke District Attorney George Gascón
This awful New York story, and this attempted destruction of from what all appearances seems to be a fine young man, was created by progressives every step of the way. First, create a chaotic, dangerous environment where lunatics in the subway (and streets) are an everyday occurrence. Undermine the police at every turn, then go soft on criminals whenever possible. Second, go after those who fight back and make examples out of them, even though you helped put them in that position in the first place.
I’m encouraged by some of the pushback we’re seeing from voters, and it must continue if we’re ever going to make our cities great again. DAs like Alvin Bragg and Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner must be kicked to the curb. Laws must be strengthened, not weakened. Voters must reject George Soros’ vision.
Unrepentant: George Soros Vows to Continue Backing Woke Prosecutors Despite the Lives They’ve Ruined
Dear New York Women Being Attacked by Strangers, Vote Like an Adult
I hope we as a country make it happen.
In the meantime, I pray for Daniel Penny.
