A man who had been shouting at people aboard a New York City subway train died after fellow riders tackled him and one put him in a chokehold that lasted until his body went limp. And now the incident has led to Democrats being at each other’s necks, too.

Video of the altercation posted online by a freelance journalist showed the man lying beneath Neely, holding him in a headlock position for several minutes as Neely tried and failed to break free. A second passenger pinned Neely’s arms while a third person held down his shoulder.

“Jordan Neely was murdered,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “Jordan was houseless and crying for food in a time when the city is raising rents and stripping services to militarize itself while many in power demonize the poor, the murderer gets protected w/ passive headlines + no charges. It’s disgusting.”

“Black men seem to always be choked to death,” Ocasio-Cortez’s ideological brother Rep. Jamaal Bowman said. “Jordan Neely did not have to die. It’s as simple as that. Yet we have another Black man publicly executed.”

A pile of other Democrats jumped on the Marine-bashing bandwagon. But not all saw the incident the same way.

“People who are homeless in our subways, many of them in the throes of mental health episodes, and that’s what I believe some of the factors involved here,” Governor Kathy Hochul said. “There’s consequences for behavior.”

Meanwhile NYC Mayor Eric Adams said, “There’s a lot we don’t know about what happened here, so I’m going to refrain from commenting further.”

This prompted a back-and-forth exchange of fire between the two camps.

“NYC’s 2nd Black Mayor just All Lives Mattered the murder of a mentally ill Black man who was killed by a blood thirsty vigilante. Representation though, right?”  New York City Councilman Chi Ossé wrote on Twitter.

“Consequences for whom?” NYC Councilwoman Tiffany Cabán wrote about Hochul’s comment. “Executive leadership that time & time again pump more $ into policing & incarceration systems, champion policies that criminalize and cage more people? Who opt for that instead of funding a robust public health infrastructure & continuum of care?”

But Adams wouldn’t take the progressive Democrats’ arguments sitting down.

“I don’t think that’s very responsible at the time where we are still investigating the situation,” Adams said in response to their hand wringing. “Let’s let the DA conduct his investigation with the law enforcement officials. To really interfere with that is not the right thing to do,” he said. “I’m going to be responsible and allow them to do their job and allow them to determine exactly what happened here.”

“We don’t know exactly what happened here,” Adams said, adding that “we cannot just blatantly say what a passenger should or should not do in a situation like that, and we should allow the investigation to take its course.”

The 24-year-old Marine veteran involved in the struggle, who appeared to be white, was taken into custody and released without charges. His name has not been released publicly.

The medical examiner’s office classified Neely’s death as a homicide and the manner as a chokehold, but noted that any determination about criminal culpability would be left to the legal system.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office said it is investigating.

“As part of our rigorous ongoing investigation, we will review the Medical Examiner’s report, assess all available video and photo footage, identify and interview as many witnesses as possible, and obtain additional medical records,” read a statement from a spokesperson for the DA.

Neely’s death comes amid a period of heightened public attention to both homelessness and mental illness on New York City’s streets and subways. Following several high-profile incidents, including a shooting on a subway train that left 10 people wounded last year, Mayor Eric Adams promised to deploy additional police officers and mental health workers throughout the transit system.

The freelance journalist who recorded the incident, Juan Alberto Vazquez, told the New York Post that Neely was screaming “in an aggressive manner,” and complaining of hunger and thirst. Neely did not physically attack anyone, Vazquez said, adding that the Marine veteran approached the man after he threw his jacket to the ground.

The video starts with Neely already on the subway car’s floor, with the man’s left arm around Neely’s neck, locked into his other arm positioned against the man’s head. A second man holds Neely’s outstretched arm while pinning the other hand against his body. Neely is mostly still, but half a minute later tries to struggle out of the headlock. Eventually, he goes limp.

(AP/YWN)