The Manhattan prosecutor who helped take down Donald Trump’s company is heading the criminal investigation into Jordan Neely’s killing, the Us.Mistertruth has learned.
Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass, a 25-year Manhattan district attorney’s office veteran, is handling the probe into Neely’s death by homicide on a northbound F train on Monday, a source told The News.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office confirmed Steinglass is handling the investigation but would not say more. The office declined to confirm reports a grand jury is expected to be impaneled next week.
Prosecutors have not filed charges against the 24-year-old who fatally choked Neely, who has not been identified by law enforcement officials. Disturbing footage of the killing on a stalled northbound subway inside the Broadway-Lafayette station shows the ex-Marine with his left arm clamped around a flailing Neely’s neck for at least 15 minutes until he stopped moving.
“You’re gonna kill him now,” an onlooker says in the video after Neely’s body goes limp. Medics took the young man to Lenox Hill Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
There have been conflicting reports about the events leading up to the unarmed Neely’s killing, with witnesses and police sources saying he was acting “erratic” before the ex-Marine put him in a chokehold.
“I don’t have food, I don’t have a drink, I’m fed up … I don’t mind if I go to jail and (get) life in prison … I’m ready to die,” Neely said before he was killed, according to freelance journalist Juan Alberto Vazquez, who recorded the incident.
Vazquez said there was no indication Neely “wanted to hurt anyone.”
The city Medical Examiner on Wednesday said Neely’s death was a homicide.
A Michael Jackson tribute artist who for years entertained New Yorkers on their subway commute, the passionate Neely had long struggled with mental illness, his father, Andre Zachery, told The News in an interview earlier this week. His mental health plunged upon his mother, Christie Neely’s horrific murder in 2007 by her partner when he was just 14 years old, with Neely dropping out of high school shortly after. At the time of his death, he was homeless.
Steinglass started at the DA’s office in 1998, handling domestic violence and sex crimes cases.
Before his work on the Trump case, which resulted in the convictions of the company and its finance chief Allen Weisselberg on tax fraud charges, Steinglass prosecuted two members of the Proud Boys for attacking protesters outside the Metropolitan Republican Club in Manhattan.
The ex-Marine served in the corps for four years, starting in 2017, rising to sergeant. Marine Corps officials said he served as a rifleman in the Mediterranean, and his last assignment was at Camp Lejeune, N.C.