Jordan Neely friend searched streets for him before chokehold death

The Micheal Jackson hit “Man in the Mirror” now sounds a note of heartbreak for an old friend of Manhattan subway chokehold victim Jordan Neely.

Christophe Palmer, 36, first met Neely when they were teens living in the same building in Washington Heights and had even been out searching the streets for him in recent months.

Growing up together, Palmer’s younger friend was already honing his impersonation of the King of Pop — and taught Palmer to hear Jackson’s smash single with new ears.

“He said, ‘Listen to it and think of yourself as a human being — who you are and who you are to yourself are two different things,’” recalled Palmer. ”The same way that someone doesn’t know yours, you don’t know theirs. Treat them as if you at least know that.’”

The entire city now knows of the 30-year-old homeless man, his life and hard times recounted repeatedly since his May 1 death in a chokehold aboard a Manhattan subway car applied by an ex-Marine now charged with manslaughter.

But Palmer said there’s plenty they don’t know about Neely: His friend’s sense of humor, his hopes for the future.

“He was one of the most loving and funny people and always had good energy,” Palmer said. “He was eager to do anything that included his passion.”

Neely’s funeral will be held Friday at Harlem’s Mount Neboh Baptist Church, a final farewell 18 days after the struggling victim went limp on the floor of a subway car. Palmer is among the scores expected to attend.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who early on called for criminal charges against Penny, will deliver the eulogy.

After Neely slipped into homeless, a concerned Palmer would often encounter him on the 181st station platform on the No. 1 line, or sitting on a staircase near 191st St. between Broadway and Wadsworth Terrace. On occasion, Neely appeared near New York-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia.

“I would make the transfer just so that I could see if he was there,” said Palmer. “On those nights that I…