About 100 mourners filled the pews of Mt. Neboh Baptist Church in Harlem on Friday to remember Jordan Neely, who was choked to death on a subway train earlier this month.
The Rev. Johnnie Green Jr. started by saying that the ceremony would honor how Neely lived — not how he died.
A white casket adorned with gold and covered in a heaping bouquet of red and white roses stood before the pews.
The somber service was punctuated by bouts of joyful music, as the pastor and a choir led the mourners in gospel songs. People danced in the pews and clapped along. Between speeches, four young men sang an a cappella rendition of “People Get Ready.” As they crooned about the “train to Jordan,” people in the pews clapped and cheered.
Neely’s aunt, Mildred Mahazu, said her nephew had idolized Michael Jackson since he was 7 years old, and that he had also been a soccer and basketball star in high school. She said Neely and his mother, who was strangled to death when he was 14, had an “unbreakable bond.”
But the service was about more than mourning Neely’s death or celebrating his life. It was also a call to action.
“Let me say as I begin that we should not not celebrate Jordan’s life but we should not ignore how he died,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said during his eulogy. “This funeral was not on the schedule. We’re not here because of natural causes. We’re here because of unnatural policies.”
Sharpton called for changes to the systems that allowed Neely to fall through the cracks.
People in the pews rose to their feet and erupted in chants of “No justice, no peace.”
Yusef Salaam, a member of the wrongly convicted Central Park Five who is now running for City Council, called Neely’s killing a “lynching.”
According to a witness, Neely, 30, was riding an uptown F train through Manhattan when he started shouting that he was hungry, thirsty and tired — and that he didn’t care if he went to jail or died. At some point after that, another straphanger took Neely to the ground and wrapped his arm around Neely’s neck, according to Juan Alberto Vazquez, the journalist who recorded part of the incident. The video shows Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old Marine veteran, continuing to choke Neely even after he was no longer moving, as an off-camera voice tells him to stop. Two other men, who have not been identified, appeared to be helping to restrain Neely.
Police arrived several minutes after the train pulled into the Broadway-Lafayette Street station. First responders took Neely to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Last week, the Manhattan district attorney’s office charged Penny with second-degree manslaughter, which applies when someone is accused of recklessly killing another in New York. Penny surrendered and was freed after paying a $100,000 bond shortly after his arraignment. An online crowdfunding campaign created by Penny’s attorneys had already garnered more than $2.6 million in donations as of Friday morning, after receiving public support from conservatives like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
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