Who Killed Jordan Neely?

The death of Jordan Neely on the New York Subway has led to a predictable polarisation of opinion with on the one hand race hustlers protesting and the moronic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claiming he was murdered, while on the other hand, rational people of all political stripes have called for the public not to rush to judgment and to allow the authorities to investigate thoroughly, although most have expressed satisfaction at the action taken against Neely if not its outcome.

Of the three men who restrained him, the one who held Neely in a headlock has now been charged with manslaughter. What though do we know about Jordan Neely?

He was said to have been thirty years old when he died. His mother was said to have hailed from the city of Bayonne, New Jersey.  On April 7, 2007, her body was found in a suitcase dumped on the side of a major New York road. She had been strangled. She was said to have been 36 at the time; Jordan was 14.

Christie Neely appears to have been a single mother but a reasonably successful one. She was working as a telemarketer, and had attended law school where she met Shawn Southerland who was somewhat older than her; he was born December 30, 1961.  In 2008, Southerland was charged with her murder, and doesn’t appear to have learned much in law school because he opted for a bench trial then defended himself, two bad mistakes.

For whatever reason, Southerland’s trial was delayed substantially. He was convicted in March 2012 and received a thirty year sentence without parole. He has appealed his conviction more than once, without success.

Jordan testified at the Jersey City trial and said his mother’s relationship with her killer had been crazy, with fights every day.

It is unclear what happened to him after his mother’s murder, but both his uncle and maternal grandfather testified at the trial, so very likely he stayed with one of them.

It is understandable that a fourteen year old might go off the rails after his mother’s murder, but reasons are not excuses. You will by now probably have seen footage of Neely impersonating Michael Jackson – he was very good, right down to the Moon Walk, (Jackson died in 2009).  It remains to be seen why he was homeless, but he managed to notch up more than forty arrests. That statistic in isolation means nothing, but violent attacks on strangers are a different matter entirely.

Neely was said  by a police official to have been arrested no fewer than 42 times between 2013 and 2021 for transit fraud (fare dodging) and criminal trespass (which may sound more serious than it is). Many of his arrests were said to be related to alcohol, again, hardly the crime of the century, but there were four for assault. An assault isn’t necessarily a serious crime unless the accused is a doctor, a lawyer, or someone else who could lose his livelihood over it, but in June 2021, he punched Anne Mitcheltree – a random stranger – in the head. She is now 65.

In November the same year he assaulted a 67 year old woman. At the time of his death there was a warrant out for his arrest which was issued on February 23 this year.

In the UK, a man who assaulted a random stranger in the street might be granted bail, but if he assaulted a second stranger five months later before the first case had been disposed of, he would most certainly not have been released on bail again. Whatever Jordan Neely’s mental state, if anyone besides himself is to be blamed for his premature death, it is not the people who attempted to restrain him on that train, but the idiots and ideologues who turned him loose on the public when he was clearly a danger to both others and to himself.

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