In Deadly Subway Encounter, Questions of Mental Illness and Use of Force

Most frequent riders of the New York City subway have seen people acting erratically on trains. Usually, they ignore them, move away from them or switch to another car.

On Monday, one rider went up to Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old Michael Jackson impersonator who had been homeless for several years and was screaming that he was hungry and ready to die. The rider, a 24-year-old man who has not been identified, wrapped his arms around Mr. Neely’s neck and head and held him for several minutes until he went limp; he was later pronounced dead.

The episode, filmed on a nearly four-minute video that shows other riders helping to pin down Mr. Neely while others looked on, has led to a police investigation and spurred advocates for the homeless, city officials and others to call for an arrest. Gov. Kathy Hochul said she needed to review the incident more closely but called the man’s death troubling.

“It was deeply disturbing,” she told reporters.

The incident comes as the city grapples with how to reduce both crime and the number of people with mental illness living on the streets, while also respecting the rights of its most vulnerable residents. The two issues have become the twin focuses of Mayor Eric Adams, who has sent more police to patrol train stations and to sweep homeless encampments even as he has supported policies that offer a gentler approach to people who are homeless and mentally ill.

Any criminal case could come down to whether the man who placed the rider in a chokehold was justified in using force, according to legal specialists.

Under New York law, a person may use physical force on another person if they have a reasonable belief that it is necessary to defend themselves or others. But a person can only use deadly physical force if they have reason to believe that an attacker is doing or about to do the same.

The police and prosecutors must determine what the intentions of the rider were when he grabbed Mr. Neely, if the rider felt physically threatened and if other passengers believed they had a reason to fear for their safety, said Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

“The D.A.’s office is going to do a painstaking investigation where they are going to interview every witness and look at the video frame by frame,” she said.

The police, who questioned the 24-year-old man and let him go on Monday night, said that they were investigating the death and that the medical examiner’s office had yet to rule on a cause. A spokesman for the Manhattan district attorney said that they were also investigating. Mr. Adams declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation. An official briefed on the investigation confirmed Mr. Neely’s identity, although the police have yet to do so.

“There was no empathy on that train car,” said Karim Walker, an organizing and outreach specialist at the Urban Justice Center, who works with people who are homeless. There should be accountability for the death of the man, he said.

“He did not need to nor did he deserve to die in the manner that he did,” Mr. Walker said. “That’s what really scares me and that’s what really breaks my heart.”

The police likely released the man who had held down Mr. Neely because they could not yet determine whether a crime had been committed, particularly without a ruling from the medical examiner’s office, Ms. Friedman Agnifilo said.

Witnesses said that Mr. Neely was acting in a “hostile and erratic manner” toward other passengers on the train, according to the police.

Juan Alberto Vazquez, a freelance journalist who was riding on the train, said the victim was yelling about being hungry and thirsty. “‘I don’t mind going to jail and getting life in prison,’” Mr. Vazquez recalled him saying. “‘I’m ready to die.’”

That kind of language might have led other passengers to believe that Mr. Neely was going to do something violent, said Todd Spodek, a criminal defense lawyer.

“I imagine that the collective feeling on that train was that something was happening,” he said.

The case raises questions about how people respond to the actions of the “poor, the unhoused and most especially those perceived as suffering from mental illness,” said Christopher Fee, an English professor at Gettysburg College who teaches about homelessness.

“Those bystanders may have felt threatened by the victim, but they were not in fact attacked by him,” he said. “Still, they watched him die.”

Left-leaning politicians called the death of Mr. Neely, who was Black, a “lynching” by the other rider, who appeared to be white.

Mr. Vazquez said at the time that it did not appear as if Mr. Neely was suffocating, but after learning he died, he became troubled by what he had seen on the train.

The reaction of bystanders reflects what can happen to many people when they witness a crisis, said Lee Ann DeShong-Cook, assistant professor of social work at Juniata College.

They “were experiencing various levels of fight, flight or freeze,” she said, adding, “had someone simply offered the homeless man a bottle of water or a snack he might have been able to calm down, re-engage his rational brain and would still be alive today.”

Workers from the Bowery Residents’ Committee, which does homeless outreach in the subways, had known Mr. Neely since 2017, according to a person familiar with his history with social services.

A team had spotted him on the subway as recently as March 22. He appeared to be struggling with both mental illness and substance use disorder, according to his records. At one point, he lived at a safe-haven shelter, which has more privacy and fewer restrictions than other shelters.

Until recent years, the subway was where Mr. Neely had felt happy and free to perform as a dancer, said his friend, Moses Harper, an artist who met Mr. Neely in 2009, when he was 16 years old.

Mr. Neely would dress up as Michael Jackson during his “Thriller” stage and ride the trains, moon-walking in front of commuters.

Mr. Neely and Ms. Harper, who also impersonates Michael Jackson, bonded over being street artists. Ms. Harper said she lost touch with Mr. Neely until she saw him again on a cold day in 2016, walking through subway cars with his head down.

The two left the station and walked several blocks together, talking. She gave him her shirt, some food, and told him where she lived.

Ms. Harper said she urged him to come find her when he was ready to get help.

“He said, ‘I’m going to get it together,’” she said. “And that’s the last time I saw him.”

Emon Thompson, 30, who lives in Jamaica, Queens, said she first saw Mr. Neely about two weeks ago at around 1 a.m. after she boarded an F train in Lower Manhattan.

“He was very upset at the time, and most of us just looked at him,” Ms. Thompson recalled. “He said he needed help and kept repeating the words, ‘food, shelter, I need a job.’”

Ms. Thompson saw him again a week later, at about 8 p.m., when she and her 8-year-old son were on a Manhattan-bound F train. She said she gave him some money and he thanked her “for five minutes.”

Mr. Neely seemed tired, Ms. Thompson said, and told her he was embarrassed that he had not showered.

“I could tell he was at his wit’s end, you know?” she said. “He didn’t look as if he wanted to beg and he looked mad that he even had to do that.”

Jonah E. Bromwich, Jeffery C. Mays and Andy Newman contributed reporting.