Police officers watch Wednesday as demonstrators gather at the Broadway-Lafayette subway station to protest the death of Jordan Neely in New York. Neely, a man who was suffering an apparent mental health episode aboard a subway car, died after being headbutted by another driver on Monday.
Jake Offenhartz/AP
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Police officers watch Wednesday as demonstrators gather at the Broadway-Lafayette subway station to protest the death of Jordan Neely in New York. Neely, a man who was suffering an apparent mental health episode aboard a subway car, died after being headbutted by another driver on Monday.
Jake Offenhartz/AP
Advocates for the homeless are demanding accountability in the death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man who died this week on a New York City subway train after being fatally shot by fellow passenger for several minutes.
Neely, a Black man who had performed on subway platforms as a Michael Jackson impersonator, had been complaining of hunger and thirst while riding an F train in Manhattan on Monday, according to journalist Juan Alberto Vazquez, who witnessed the incident. Vazquez described his account in a Facebook post in which he shared a four-minute video showing the encounter.
Neely, shouted that he wanted, that he did not care if he went to prison and that he was ready to die, Vazquez wrote. Neely then took off his jacket and threw it aggressively on the floor of the subway car, but it didn’t seem like he wanted to attack anyone, according to the journalist. Then, a 24-year-old white passenger on the train put Neely in a headlock and held him in the position for 15 minutes, Vazquez said. Two other bystanders also stepped in to help the man restrain Neely.
The city medical examiner ruled the death a homicide caused by compression of the neck from the chokehold. As of Thursday evening, no arrests had been made. The 24-year-old who held Neely hostage has not yet been publicly named. The Manhattan district attorney’s office, meanwhile, is leading the charge its own investigation at Neely’s death.
“This situation cries out for justice,” said Shelly Nortz, deputy executive director for policy at the Coalition for the Homeless. “I want to see this person held accountable for murdering a fellow New Yorker. Allowing this to happen only encourages others to do the same.”
In response to the killings, Nortz and other advocates for the homeless put the blame squarely on the city’s policies and rhetoric about people experiencing homelessness. They say the policies criminalize people living on the streets, many of whom experience mental illness.
Jawanza Williams, the director of the organization at Voices Of Community Activists & Leaders (VOCAL-NY), said in a statement that “people have been deputized” by Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. of New York Kathy Hochul “hyper-conservative, fear. rhetoric of heart.”
Demonstrators march through the Broadway-Lafayette subway station to protest the death of Jordan Neely on Wednesday in New York.
Jake Offenhartz/AP
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Jake Offenhartz/AP
Demonstrators march through the Broadway-Lafayette subway station to protest the death of Jordan Neely on Wednesday in New York.
Jake Offenhartz/AP
“The killing of Jordan Neely is a direct result of the sustained political and systemic abandonment and dehumanization of people experiencing the complexities of homelessness and mental health,” the statement is read. “Neely’s blood is on their hands, and any semblance of justice here requires accountability and reversal of Adams and Hochul’s austerity budget to stop blocking progressive politics in Albany.”
Reducing New York City’s homelessness and crime were both primary focuses of Mayor Adams’ agenda. He and Hochul sent outreach workers to and increased police presence in the subway system — where officers are mandated to enforce new transit rules that include a ban on sleeping — to make the city feel safer. Last year, the mayor announced plans to hospitalize more homeless people by inadvertently providing care to those deemed to be in “psychiatric crisis.”
Advocates fear the city’s approach is shaping residents’ perceptions of homeless people as violent.
“There’s been this constant implicit and sometimes explicit link between homelessness and crime — homelessness and insecurity,” said Sara Newman, director of organizing at the Hearts Initiative. Open. “The same goes for mental illness. And the solution to that is for people who are experiencing homelessness or mental illness to leave.”
“When you have top leaders in the state and the city validating that kind of perception and connection, I think it makes people feel like it’s OK to stand by when someone is being killed for not actually getting hurt ‘ to nobody,” she added.
In reality, noted Nortz of the Coalition for the Homeless, people experiencing homelessness or mental illness are at a higher level. risk of damage from harming others.
Neither the mayor’s office nor the governor’s office returned NPR’s requests for comment.
Adams took heat for his lack of rebuke in the comments made after Neely’s death. Question whether it is appropriate for people to take matters into their own hands in a situation, Adams told CNN on Wednesday“We cannot simply say what a passenger should or should not do in a situation like that. We should let the investigation take its course.”
The same question was asked to Hochul.
“I think it’s a case-by-case situation,” she said he told reporters. “But it became very clear that the individual was not going to cause harm to these other people. And the video of three individuals holding him until the last breath blew him away, I mean, it was a very extreme response.”
She also said that Neely’s family deserves justice.
Newman hopes that Neely’s death will force people, elected officials in particular, to rethink their approaches to policies and rhetoric that affect people experiencing homelessness and mental illness.
“It shouldn’t take something horrible to happen to be a wake-up call to people about how dangerous the dehumanization of our neighbors is,” she said.
