One of the most explosive claims surrounding the killing of Jordan Neely aboard a New York City subway turned out not to be true.

Eric Gonzalez, the man seen helping Daniel Penny restrain Neely during the fatal May 2023 encounter, admitted under oath that he lied to investigators when he claimed Neely had tried to hit him. Gonzalez also acknowledged fabricating another remarkable detail: that Neely supposedly told him he was OK after being released.

Those admissions matter because the public debate surrounding Neely’s death became consumed by competing narratives about what happened before and during the chokehold. Neely was portrayed by Penny’s defenders as such an immediate physical danger that extraordinary intervention was necessary.

Yet one of the supposed pieces supporting that picture was fiction.

“I Was Trying to Justify My Actions”

Gonzalez’s explanation was remarkably straightforward.

He testified that he invented the story because he feared consequences after learning Neely had died. According to Gothamist, Gonzalez told jurors that he was attempting to justify why he had physically participated in restraining Neely.

That distinction is crucial.

Gonzalez testified that he wasn’t even aboard the train during Neely’s initial confrontation with passengers. Surveillance evidence showed him entering the Broadway-Lafayette Street station shortly before the train arrived. He boarded and encountered Penny already restraining Neely on the floor.

In other words, Gonzalez could not truthfully provide firsthand testimony about what Neely had supposedly done to passengers before Penny grabbed him.

Yet initially, he did exactly that.

Neely’s Behavior Frightened Passengers, but the Evidence Was More Complicated

Correcting Gonzalez’s lie does not require pretending passengers felt completely comfortable around Neely.

Several witnesses described being frightened by his behavior. One passenger testified that she thought she might die after Neely entered the subway car yelling aggressively. But that same witness testified that she did not see Neely physically contact anyone and did not see him carrying a weapon.

Another witness said Neely sounded “violent and desperate,” while also testifying that she never saw him approach a particular passenger or display a weapon. Another passenger testified that he did not feel threatened.

Those differences matter because fear and physical assault are not interchangeable facts.

A person can behave erratically enough to frighten people without actually striking somebody. Gonzalez’s original story conveniently erased that distinction by introducing an alleged attempted assault that he later admitted never happened.

The Chokehold Continued

The most disturbing part of Gonzalez’s testimony may actually concern what happened after he arrived.

Gonzalez testified that he offered to take control of Neely’s arms so Penny could release him. According to his testimony, he communicated essentially that he would hold Neely’s arms and Penny could let go.

Penny continued the chokehold.

An investigative timeline introduced at trial concluded that Penny restrained Neely for at least 5 minutes and 53 seconds, including nearly a minute after Neely’s final voluntary movement.

That became central to the prosecution’s theory. Prosecutors did not argue simply that Penny had maliciously attacked Neely from the beginning. Their argument was that an intervention they acknowledged may have begun with good intentions continued far beyond what circumstances justified. Penny maintained that he intended to restrain Neely and protect passengers rather than kill him.

A Convenient Story Collapses

Gonzalez’s admission should serve as a warning about how quickly narratives harden following controversial killings.

Neely was homeless, experiencing serious difficulties and behaving erratically. Those facts made it extraordinarily easy for the public to fill gaps in the evidence with assumptions.

“He frightened passengers” can become “he attacked passengers.”

“He was acting aggressively” can become “he was physically assaulting people.”

And once those claims ricochet through social media thousands of times, corrections rarely travel with the same velocity.

Gonzalez’s original account was particularly damaging because he wasn’t merely another online commentator speculating about what happened. He physically participated in restraining Neely.

And he admitted that he lied.

Jordan Neely Deserved Facts, Not Mythology

There is room for legitimate disagreement about what a reasonable passenger should have done when confronted by Neely’s behavior. Some witnesses genuinely feared for their safety, and those experiences shouldn’t be dismissed merely because Neely never struck them.

But the opposite standard must apply as well.

Neely’s behavior cannot be exaggerated simply because doing so makes his death easier to rationalize.

The public deserved an accurate account of what happened aboard that F train. Jordan Neely deserved one too.

Whatever anyone thinks about Daniel Penny’s ultimate legal responsibility, one supposed fact can now be removed from the argument:

Jordan Neely did not try to hit Eric Gonzalez.

Gonzalez admitted that story came from him.

And he admitted he made it up.