It looks like former Marine Daniel Penny is finding a way to justify placing Jordan Neely in a fatal chokehold for nearly 15 minutes. In a new interview, the 24-year-old white man claimed if he had not acted, the unarmed Black man “would have killed somebody.”

As previously reported by REVOLT, on May 1, Neely, an unhoused street performer living in New York, died on a subway after an interaction with Penny. The military vet claimed the 30-year-old Black man was behaving irrationally because he loudly complained about having no food and nothing to drink. “If [Neely] had carried out his threats, he would have killed somebody,” Penny told Fox News Digital in an interview published today (June 8).

Penny confessed to the outlet that his attack was influenced by late human rights activist and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. He recalled having to read the author’s memoir “Night” during high school and how the Romanian born historian spoke to his class about life as a Jewish prisoner in Nazi concentration camps. “One of the overall messages that he talked about was that good people did nothing. It’s a lesson that I carry with me to this day,” the Long Island native shared. He continued to rationalize depriving Neely of oxygen by adding, “Between stops, you’re trapped on the train, and there’s nowhere to go. You can try to move away, but you can only do so much on a packed car. I was scared. I looked around, and I saw older women and children, and they were terrified.”

He then approached Neely, used his Marine training to drag him to the ground of the subway cart and kept him in a position that would restrict his airflow until the New Yorker stopped breathing. Penny now faces up to 15 years behind bars for second-degree manslaughter if convicted.