The 30-year-old Black man killed on the subway after another passenger put him in a lethal chokehold Tuesday night is being remembered for his talent, spark and tenacity by the family, friends and outreach workers who knew him.
Jordan Neely was well known to many New Yorkers as a moonwalking Michael Jackson impersonator who danced on the subways and platforms since as early as 2009. His charismatic performances masked deepening struggles with mental illness that friends and family say were accelerated by a lack of stable housing and his mother’s brutal murder at the hands of her abusive boyfriend when Neely was just 14.
Neely’s death, which was recorded by another straphanger and posted on social media, has sparked outcry among some elected officials and everyday New Yorkers as the city struggles to house its homeless residents and provide services to people with severe mental illness.
Larry Malcolm Smith, Jr. said he got to know Neely in foster care roughly a decade ago and considered him a big brother who shared the money he made dancing so that the other kids could afford food or a haircut.
“This was a good guy,” Smith said. “He would be in the New York City train station using his God-gifted ability and talent.”
Smith said New Yorkers may focus on his recent struggles with mental illness, homelessness and violent encounters with other subway riders — he was reportedly arrested multiple times in recent years — but those problems seemed to be symptoms of a tough childhood marked by his mother’s devastating murder.
“I just want people to know the positives,” Smith said, adding that Neely was failed by the very systems meant to ensure young people have stable homes and steady mental health treatment. “Jordan could have been housed but nobody cares.”
As a teen, Neely lived in Bayonne, New Jersey, just south of Jersey City, according to reporting on his mother’s death in 2007. More than four years later, he testified at the murder trial of her…
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