Don’t fault Daniel Penny for trying to save others like the heroes on United Flight 93

On Sept. 11, 2001, after studying that two different hijacked planes had been crashed into the Twin Towers, passengers aboard United Airways Flight 93 fought their hijackers in an try to avoid wasting themselves and different People.

What Daniel Penny and two different F-train riders did to subdue a reportedly out-of-control Jordan Neely was no totally different.

The end result aboard that F practice on Might 1 was equally tragic and one thing that shouldn’t have occurred regardless of repeated lethal encounters between subway riders and violent, mentally-ill homeless people (principally males).

And it was with that data in thoughts that Penny and the others took motion.

Recollections of my very own shut calls with threatening individuals tempered my response to Penny utilizing a headlock to subdue Neely.

It was the summer season once I took a federal youth job on the Metropolis of Syracuse Division of Transportation.

It was a sizzling July day between my junior and senior semesters at Syracuse College, whereas on a break from demolishing a avenue island, I noticed one thing paying homage to a barroom scene in a Hollywood Western film.

One other summer season employee was capturing the enterprise finish of a jackhammer on the toes of a coworker and laughing because the petrified child danced round.

After switching off the compressor and snatching the jack hammer away, the instigator charged me. I sidestepped the large fool, put him in a headlock and fell to the bottom with him.

As soon as he was subdued, we had been separated. Nobody received harm and we loved a peaceable remainder of the summer season.

Final yr, I wrote two columns describing my encounter with a ranting, knife-wielding, homeless emotionally disturbed particular person aboard a Bronx 6 practice and the aftermath of his arrest.

My spouse and I encountered a 30-something raveled and barefoot man, later recognized by police as Johnathan Gonzalez, threatening an older rider with a blade.

He threatened to chop the opposite passenger’s throat, dared anybody to cease him and ranted about not caring if he went to Rikers.

Gonzalez’s rant wasn’t in contrast to what witnesses ascribed to Jordan Neely on the time of his F-train meltdown.

Happily, I drew his consideration lengthy sufficient for his goal to get away. After exiting the practice, I referred to as 911 and NYPD cops arrested him just a few stops later.

On April 28, Gonzalez was launched from Rikers after taking a responsible plea final yr. I can solely assume that he’s again on the road.

It might need been a distinct end result had Gonzalez tried to make good on his threats to “lower” somebody. Would I’ve been topic to arrest if, in self-defense, I had harmed him?

Can’t rule out weapons

Provided that susceptible avenue persons are targets of avenue thugs, it’s affordable to imagine that they’re armed with a weapon — whether or not one is seen or not.

Not an unreasonable assumption for Penny and the opposite F-train riders.

The warning indicators have been there for Mayor Adams, pandering elected officers and the outrage mob to see.

Again in October 2019, Rodriguez “Randy” Santos, an unhinged 24-year-old drifter, was arrested for bludgeoning 4 sleeping homeless males to dying and badly injuring two others in separate unprovoked Chinatown assaults.

After that horrific assault, Mayor Invoice de Blasio dispatched homeless outreach employees and beefed up police patrols in Chinatown.

“Nothing will change. You’re nonetheless going to have berserkers out right here strolling round hungry,” mentioned a homeless acquaintance of Santos and the victims.

Within the intervening 1,304 days, many extra harmless individuals minding their very own enterprise have been set upon by violent, hungry, homeless berserkers.

• A mentally-ill homeless man pushed Michelle Go to her dying off a Occasions Sq. subway platform in January 2022
• EMS Lt. Alison Russo-Elling, an FDNY paramedic, was fatally stabbed in a mindless and unprovoked assault by madman in Queens in October 2022.
• Waheed Foster, an ex-con vagrant, savagely pummeled a Queens mother at a Jamaica subway station in September 2022.
• In November 2020, in a vicious and unprovoked assault, a commuter on her option to work was shoved pushed into the trail of an oncoming practice at Union Sq. station. Her attacker was one other mentally-ill homeless man.

But there have been no protest marches, rallies or acts of civil disobedience calling for justice on behalf of those victims of subway madmen and boulevard berserkers.

However when a younger unarmed Marine Corps veteran steps ahead believing he’s defending his fellow subway riders by taking management of a perceived risk, he’s referred to as a “assassin” by far-left vigilantes.

The one distinction between Daniel Penny and the heroic passengers aboard United 93 is he’s been charged with manslaughter by a often soft-on-crime Manhattan DA.

I pray that Daniel Penny isn’t doomed.