‘I was praying police would come ’

Daniel Penny, the former Marine whose chokehold killed Jordan Neely on the floor of a subway car last month, claims in a new interview he was “scared” and felt “intimidated” by the homeless victim.

In newly recorded interviews released Sunday by lawyers defending him on manslaughter charges, Penny said he wasn’t “trying to choke him to death” during the May 1 F train encounter but just wanted to hold the menacing passenger long enough for cops to intervene.

“I was trying to keep him on the ground until the police came,” Penny, 24, said in the videos posted on the Law & Crime Network Youtube channel. “I was praying that the police would come and take this situation over. I didn’t want to be put in that situation but I couldn’t just sit still and let him carry out these threats.”

According to Penny, an East Village resident, Neely, 30, was threatening passengers, and, despite Penny’s own fear he felt compelled to respond.

“There’s a common misconception that Marines don’t get scared,” Neely said in the interview with his lawyers. “We’re actually taught one of our core values is courage and courage is not the absence of fear but how you handle fear. I was scared for myself but I looked around, there was women and children. He was yelling in their faces saying these threats. I just couldn’t sit still.”

Penny jumped into action, a clash that ended with Penny and Jordan on the filthy train floor with Penny’s arm around Jordan’s neck and Jordan unable to breath.

“Some people say that I was holding on to Mr. Neely for 15 minutes,” Neely said. “This is not true. Between stops is only a couple of minutes. So the whole interaction lasted less than 5 minutes.”

“Some people say I was trying to choke him to death, which is also not true,” he added. “I was trying to restrain him.”

Penny surrendered to police nearly two weeks later. He remains free on $100,000 bail.

Neely had been arrested 42 times in the last 10 years,…