New York, December 11 (RHC)-- A New York jury has acquitted subway vigilante Daniel Penny in the chokehold death of street performer Jordan Neely on a Manhattan subway train last May, finding Penny not guilty of criminally negligent homicide. 

Thirty-year-old Neely, a beloved Michael Jackson impersonator, was unhoused and hungry, and crying out for help when Penny, a white former U.S. marine, attacked him and pinned him down on a subway train by the neck for six minutes. 

Neely’s family has separately filed a civil lawsuit against Penny.  Neely’s father, Andre Zachery, was removed from the New York courtroom yesterday after protesting the not-guilty verdict, along with others. 

Zachery spoke from outside the courthouse:  “I miss my son.  My son didn’t have to go through this.  I didn’t have to go through this, either.  It hurts, really, really hurts.  What are we going to do, people?  What’s going to happen to us now?  I had enough of this.  System is rigged.  Come on, people.  Let’s do something about this.”

[ SOURCE:  DEMOCRACY NOW ]