In a Case Resembling Jordan Neely’s Killing, an Arrest Came Quickly
Last year, on a spring evening, a 28-year-old man confronted a woman on a San Diego bus who was filming him with her cellphone, according to court documents.
Edward Hilbert, 56, another rider, decided to intervene. He grabbed the man, Anthony J. McGaff, 28, put him in a chokehold and held him for eight minutes, Mr. McGaff’s family said, until Mr. McGaff lost consciousness and died.
The circumstances bear a strong similarity to the case of Jordan Neely, who was choked to death on a New York City subway last Monday, nearly one year after Mr. McGaff was killed. Like the New York case, the victim in San Diego was Black and the man who killed him was white. A video captured by a subway rider shows Daniel Penny holding Mr. Neely in a chokehold for at least three minutes, including nearly a minute after he went limp.
Yet the responses and aftermath of the two cases have been markedly different so far. In San Diego, law enforcement officials arrested Mr. Hilbert within hours. In New York City, more than a week after Mr. Neely’s killing and after the medical examiner ruled the death a homicide — a ruling that means that Mr. Neely was killed, but is not a finding of legal culpability — Mr. Penny, 24, has not been arrested.
Source: The New York Times
