A US Marine veteran who was acquitted in the chokehold death of a homeless man on the New York subway — a high-profile case highlighting the divisive issue of race in America — has been hired by a major Silicon Valley firm allied with Donald Trump.
California-based Andreessen Horowitz said Daniel Penny would join the company’s American Dynamism wing that supports the “national interest,” including aerospace, defense and public safety, according to the firm’s website on Wednesday.
Penny, who is white, was found not guilty in December of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old Black homeless man.
Neely’s May 1, 2023, death on a New York subway train was caught on video by onlookers, and the footage was shared widely on social media.
According to witnesses, Neely, before being restrained by Penny, had been screaming at passengers for food and drink and saying he was willing to die.
The video showed Penny pinning Neely, who had a history of mental illness, in a chokehold on the floor of the train for several minutes.
Besides the racial element, the case brought into focus two issues in New York: mental illness among the city’s homeless population and safety on public transit.
Protests erupted in New York after Neely’s death, resulting in several arrests, as some decried Penny’s actions as an example of white “vigilantism.”
Marc Andreessen, a co-founder of the Silicon Valley firm, is a staunch backer of Trump and played a role behind the scenes in setting up the incoming tech-focused White House.
Andreessen Horowitz has backed major tech companies including Twitter (now known as X), Airbnb and Coinbase, and he is one of the longest-serving members on Meta’s board alongside Mark Zuckerberg.
Andreessen, who co-founded Netscape in the 1990s, fights against any restrictions on technological development, whether from government regulation or social concerns, believing they are fundamentally detrimental to human progress.
