A year after Johnny Grima witnessed Jordan Neely’s body lying on the floor of an uptown F train, he still feels guilty that he walked away.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t do anything to try to save his life,” said Grima, who was formerly homeless and is a longtime advocate for those living on New York City’s streets and in its shelters.
Grima didn’t know who Neely was on that day exactly a year ago. When the train stopped at the Broadway-Lafayette Street station, he stumbled into a commotion. Daniel Penny had Neely in a chokehold in another car on the train.
Neely, who was homeless and had mental illness, according to his friends and family, came to symbolize different things to people across the city and the nation. One one side, his name became a rallying cry for better treatment of New York City’s homeless and mentally ill residents. On the other, proponents for more policing and law and order celebrated the man who put him in a chokehold. The case eventually set off protests that led to arrests.
Grima joined the public outcry over Neely’s death, along with hundreds of New Yorkers, even as he was called to testify before the grand jury in Penny’s criminal case. He said police arrested him at a demonstration and the stress of it took a toll. He began taking antidepressants for the first time in his life.
“It really f—ed me up,” Grima said during an interview this week at the Broadway-Lafayette Street station, where he witnessed the moment of Neely’s death on May 1, 2023. “It really f—ed me up for a while.”
Neely was a well-known Michael Jackson impersonator who danced on subway cars and platforms across the city. Police said he was arrested multiple times in the years before his death. Neely’s loved ones said his mental health gradually deteriorated after his mother was strangled to death when he was 14, according to news reports.
Many details about what happened in the subway car in the moments before Neely died are still unknown to the public. But the few witness accounts that have emerged describe him boarding the train on the Lower East Side, throwing his jacket on the floor, complaining that he was hungry and saying he was willing to die or go to jail. Then, according to prosecutors, Penny approached Neely from behind, put him in a chokehold and took him to the ground.
The city medical examiner’s office ruled that Neely died from compression of the neck after Penny, a former Marine, wrapped his arm around Neely’s neck for approximately six minutes, court records state. Attorneys for Neely’s family and Penny did not respond to requests for comment.
Grima said he had spent the morning of May 1, 2023 checking on homeless people and was on his way to his supportive housing apartment in the Bronx that afternoon. He was transporting a small TV a friend had given him, and was mainly focused on getting home.
“If I could travel back in time, in a time machine, and be on the platform now at the same time of arrival that I got there last year, I would enter the train car and lie and say I’m a doctor,” he said.
Grima is not a medical professional, but he said he’s taken CPR classes in the past. “I remember enough of it to try to bring the man back to f—ing life,” he said.
Video from the day of Neely’s death shows Grima entering the subway car and telling Penny to move Neely onto his side. The footage shows him walking back onto the platform a few seconds later. “I was intimidated by the man,” he told Gothamist.
Now, Grima is preparing for Penny’s criminal trial, which is slated for October. He said he’s prepared to testify if prosecutors call him as a witness and hopes Penny will be convicted and face the maximum sentence. Penny has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges.
As someone who has experienced homelessness on and off since he was a child, Grima said he sees Neely’s fate as symptomatic of a much larger failure to care for the most vulnerable New Yorkers. He said the protests over Neely’s death brought some attention to the systemic issues that contributed to it — but only temporarily.
The city has deployed mental health workers into the city’s subways, and advocates are continuing to push lawmakers to pass state legislation that would make homeless people a protected class, so offenses against them could be prosecuted as hate crimes. But Grima said the city still needs more mental health and substance abuse resources, more affordable housing, and better protections for people who have nowhere to live. The migrant crisis has only compounded the shortage of supports, he said.
“Someone like Jordan Neely didn’t have a chance,” he said.