Daniel Penny has a brand new gig following manslaughter acquittal

The Marine veteran who strangled a fellow New York Metropolis subway passenger to dying has been employed by a premier Silicon Valley funding agency – two months after he was gazing a 20-year jail sentence.

Daniel Penny was acquitted of criminally negligent murder and manslaughter in December 2024 after he grappled Jordan Neely, 30, to the bottom and held him across the neck for about six minutes in a chokehold throughout a frantic subway journey in 2023.

Now, the 26-year-old is working as a deal associate for Andreessen Horowitz in Manhattan on the agency’s American Dynamism group – a division that invests in aerospace, protection, public security, and training, amongst different sectors, states their web site.

Neely’s dying was captured fully on video by different passengers, together with Mexican freelance journalist Juan Alberto Vázquez, sparking a nationwide outcry and jaded opinion on whether or not Penny was a subway hero or a reckless killer.

A memo seen by The Free Press and despatched by a common associate on the agency, David Ulevitch, to all staff, confirmed the rent, stating: “He’ll study the enterprise of investing and he’ll work to help our portfolio firms.”

Ulevitch despatched the notice Tuesday and went as far as to reward Penny’s heroism on that ill-fated day.

“I consider, as I do know lots of you do, that Daniel acted with braveness in a troublesome state of affairs. He was acquitted of all costs,” stated Ulevitch.

“Past that, it has all the time been our coverage to guage your entire particular person and never choose them for the worst second of their complete life.”

He added that Penny’s former expertise in the USA Marine Corps would bode properly for the agency’s relationships with the Division of Protection and the general public security sector.

However throughout Penny’s manslaughter trial in November 2024, jurors and Neely’s household had been proven a number of clips of the horrific subway incident – footage that left Neely’s father in despair and compelled him to step out of the courtroom, reported PBS.

Within the incident, on Might 1, 2023, Neely, a Black homeless man, stepped onto the subway on the 2nd Avenue station and based on witnesses on the time, started “making verbal threats” to passengers.

Because the practice arrived on the Broadway-Lafayette cease, Penny leaped into motion and positioned Neely within the chokehold – till he may now not breathe and his physique grew to become immobile.

Neely had a legal historical past of over 40 earlier arrests in addition to a historical past of psychological sickness on the time of his dying.

Following the incident, the American public largely turned on Penny, and Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., indicted him for one rely of manslaughter within the second diploma and one rely of criminally negligent murder. Penny confronted 4 years in jail for a criminally negligent murder cost and as much as 15 years for manslaughter.

Whereas Penny managed to remain comparatively beneath the radar in the course of the legal course of, he out of the blue appeared in December, arm in arms with the then-president-elect Donald Trump and his vice-president-elect, JD Vance at an Military v Navy American soccer sport close to Washington DC.

Penny had been acquitted simply days earlier than he joined Trump as a visitor of honor on the sport.

Whereas Penny has little obvious enterprise capital expertise, his latest affiliation with the suitable aligns with the politics of his new agency’s founders, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who supported Trump within the 2024 election.

The pair every donated $2.5 million to a pro-Trump tremendous political motion committee. Andreessen Horowitz has been a vocal proponent of a pro-America, defense-friendly, right-leaning type of Silicon Valley funding that’s on the rise within the tech world.

The agency is a backer of Anduril, a part of a wave of tech firms more and more comfy working with the protection institution and backing Trump.