From WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Thursday, May 4th.

The name of the man who was killed by being put in a chokehold on an F train was Jordan Neely.

He was 30 years old.

He was known to many subway riders as a Michael Jackson impersonator.

Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine knew who Jordan Neely was.

Levine tweeted this yesterday.

I saw Jordan Neely perform his Michael Jackson

routine many times on the A train. He always made people smile. Levin added, our broken

mental health system failed him. Listeners, look at the YouTube page, Jordan Neely Legacy,

if you want to see videos of his act instead of the

video of his death. Jordan Neely was homeless. The New York Times says workers from the Bowery

Residence Committee, which does homeless outreach in the subways, had known Neely since 2017,

citing a person familiar with his history with social services.

So we wanted to give you at least that much about the victim of this killing as a human being before we discussed the incident in legal or broader social and cultural terms.

The New York City Medical Examiner has ruled Jordan Neely's death a homicide resulting from compression of his neck.

Jordan Neely was black.

The man who killed him was white.

The freelance journalist who shot the video of the incident that's been circulating online,

Juan Alberto Vasquez says Neely was screaming, quote, in an aggressive manner,

said he had no food, he had no drink, that he was tired, and said, I don't mind going to jail

and getting life in prison, I'm ready to die. That's a quote, according to the journalist Vasquez,

who's also quoting as saying,

...