Clarice Feldman properly described the "head lock" that Marine Daniel Penny put on rampaging subway passenger Jordan Neely and distinguished it from a "CHOKE HOLD," as the media have sometimes portrayed it, in her essay published Sunday on American Thinker.

Anyone who knows will tell you that applying a real choke hold is complex — you have to wrap the neck, then create leverage with an opposing forearm to constrict the neck so that the circulation — not the breathing — is obstructed.  A choke hold is not about breathing; it is about blood circulation. 

I looked at the blurred video and could not find the proper elements of a "choke hold" — just what Ms. Feldman properly described as a head lock.

YouTube screen grab.

This returns us to the media-generated and medically reinforced idea that when you wrap your arm around a person's neck, it's a "choke hold" that is to be condemned.  The same nonsense occurred in the case of Eric Garner, who succumbed at a time distinctly separated from the time when he was restrained and arrested, after being placed in an ambulance, talking to the ambulance attendant. 

Now we know that after he was restrained, Mr. Neely was alive and able to talk, so Mr. Penny didn't kill him.  So you might inquire: why is Penny being accused of homicide?  Could it be racial politics?

I have already elaborately explained here at American Thinker that George Floyd was not murdered, that he died of a cardiac arrest while he was resisting arrest and agitated.  He had terrible heart disease and was intoxicated with a stimulant, methamphetamine, and fentanyl, his favorite drug of abuse.  With these drugs, he was a set up for cardiac arrythmia when he resisted arrest.  He wasn't asphyxiated by the standard restraint hold applied by Officer Chauvin; he was killed by his bad heart (three vessel disease and hypertensive cardiomyopathy) and his excitement.

To proceed, the information now available is that Mr. Neely was conscious and talking at the scene after he had been restrained and then collapsed and died.  He wasn't lynched; he died because he was juiced up and excited and he got restrained by a Marine who knew how to take down a perp. 

Hey @AOC

What cold-blooded killer sticks around to make sure the victim is okay?

New footage shows Jordan Neely being put in a recovery position. Other passengers commend the Marine for subduing Neely

Every Media outlet owes this man an apology.
pic.twitter.com/qoKiTayVDY

— Ashley St. Clair (@stclairashley) May 8, 2023

Well, let's discuss that sequence in the realities of medicine.  A sudden death is the stoppage of cardiac activity, not the gradual death of asphyxiation.  Mr. Neely, Mr. Garner, another "I can't breathe" case in Staten Island a few years ago, and Saint George Floyd in Minneapolis were not murdered by the people who restrained them; they died of a cardiac arrhythmia (heartbeat problem) because they were agitated, exerting themselves, and for various reasons at risk for a sudden heart rhythm problem.  Cardiac rhythm problems kill people all the time — sudden death while exerting/excited, sometimes for no reason whatever. 

George Floyd was not murdered, nor was Mr. Neely.  Death occurred in the circumstances of an arrest or detention or restraint.  Foreseeable?  Well, you could say that every arrest of a doped up agitated jackass creates the possibility of a cardiac arrest and death.  Every time a police officer or a citizen lays a hand on a perp, there is a risk of a death — people die just because they have a cardiac arrest for excitement.

A final thought: If you think physicians in official positions were treacherous in their failure to inform the public on COVID, imagine how medical examiners, charged with determining cause of death, might be corrupted by racial politics and leftist politics when asked to determine cause of death when the dead person is a member of some "oppressed" racial or ethnic group and the accused is a white boy. 

UPDATE from Andrea Widburg: I agree completely with what John wrote about choke holds, and I have nine years of MMA experience to back me up.  I'll just add that it is possible to use a hold to kill someone by cutting off the blood supply to the brain, but that's clearly not what happened here.  As the video shows, Neely was conscious after he was put in the recovery position.

John Dale Dunn, M.D., J.D. is an emergency physician for more than 40 years and wrestled in high school, and for many years he was medical officer for four sheriffs of Brown County, Texas.