The following is an excerpt from the new book “The Children We Left Behind: How Western Culture Rationalizes Family Separation & Ignores The Pain Of Child Neglect,” by Adam B. Coleman (Wrong Speak Publishing, April 1, 2025).

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“I don’t care if I die. I don’t care if I go to jail”.

These were some of the final words spoken by Jordan Neely, a homeless thirty-year-old man who died inside a subway after threatening frightened riders and being subdued in a headlock by Daniel Penny on May 1, 2023.

Neely had a long 42-arrest history of criminal activity, involving four violent offenses spanning from 2013 to 2021, only to eventually die on the floor of an F train subway car.

While most of the public has focused on his threats before being taken down by Daniel Penny or the racial differences between Neely and Penny, I want to focus on Neely’s origin story.

My interest in sharing Neely’s story is twofold. Objectively, Neely was a troubled man who had a history of terrorizing riders and was riddled with mental health problems. But he wasn’t born that way. No child dreams of being a homeless person on the street. How did Jordan Neely go from an innocent child to dying on the subway? As I hope to illuminate for readers, it all stems from his abusive childhood.

The second reason why I want to share Jordan Neely’s story is more personal. In Jordan, I see something of myself: a child who was abandoned by his father. After my father left me, my mom, and my sister, my entire life was uprooted. By the age of six, I had lived in three states and various towns, residing with multiple family members and spending months in and out of homelessness. My father’s absence and my mother being left to raise me and my sister on her own led me to suffer from depression, low self-esteem, and suicidal ideation. At age eight, I was admitted to a mental hospital.

Credit: Wrong Speak Publishing

Would Jordan’s life have taken a different turn if he had a loving father in his life? Why could he not have been one of the lucky ones, like me, who by the grace of God overcame a traumatic childhood?

Neely grew up in an abusive household with his mother and stepfather. This violence from his stepfather escalated to the point of murdering Jordan Neely’s mother, Christine Neely, by strangulation, subsequently stuffing her body in a suitcase, and dumping her body on the Henry Hudson Highway in Bronx, NY, when Jordan Neely was 14 years old.

In an interview with The New York Post, Carolyn Neely, Jordan’s Aunt, stated that his mother’s murder was the pivotal starting point of his mental downfall.

“My sister Christie was murdered in ‘07, and after that, he has never been the same. It had a big impact on him. He developed depression, and it grew and became more serious. He was schizophrenic, PTSD.”

After his mother’s killing, Jordan bounced around from foster home to foster home for four years, being left behind in New York City’s dysfunctional foster care system.

After Jordan Neely’s death, New York’s PIX 11 News interviewed Neely’s foster brother, Larry Smith. Larry Smith viewed Jordan Neely as his best friend, big brother, and mentor.

Eventually, both Smith and Neely aged out of the foster care system, leaving them homeless on the streets of New York City. In the early years of their brotherly relationship, Neely would perform Michael Jackson dance routines on subway cars for money to feed themselves.

“He would do the whole Billy Jean [dance routine], and I would sit there and have the one hat that he gave me for Michael Jackson and collect a couple of dollars. He used that because foster parents were abusing us.”

It is Smith’s final statement that encapsulates the deep desire of every child: “Jordan never wanted money … Jordan wanted a home.”

Every child wants a home, and not just in a physical sense. It’s not enough for a child to have a place of shelter; they also need a place where they know they belong and are safe.

In various articles I’ve read about Jordan Neely in his teenage years, he was described as a quiet child who enjoyed Japanese anime. However, this quiet child was hardened like the concrete streets he’d occasionally sleep on.

There are only so many chances you’ll give the world to hurt you before you acknowledge your hopelessness by outwardly exclaiming, “I don’t care if I die. I don’t care if I go to jail.”

He gave his stepfather a chance, who ultimately murdered his mother. He gave the foster care system a chance, and they abused and abandoned him. If every adult you encounter lets you down, you’d probably go insane too and grow a deep hatred for mankind, including hatred for yourself.

Jordan Neely’s situation isn’t abnormal, and that’s the problem.

The only reason we even know his name is because of a fluke circumstance of being filmed by a journalist. But if he had overdosed alone on a street corner, he would be just another statistic.

Thousands upon thousands of Jordan Neelys all over America are on the street. They are adults now, but they were once children left behind by nearly every adult they encountered.

I once felt all the rage that Jordan felt. I sometimes still do. My father chose himself over me, my sister, and my mother and neglected me until the day he died. Thanks be to God, I made it, but my successes should never be a reason for parents to risk playing Russian Roulette with their children’s lives.

I am also a father now. And as a father, my job has been to raise my child to become greater than myself and to be a healthy and functional member of society. Over the years, I became incredibly conscious of how my actions and lack of actions could turn my son into the man you’d never want to be alone with on the streets at night.

Raising children isn’t just about feeding and housing them. How we treat them and what we teach them directly affects their likelihood of success in the world.

If you fail your children, don’t be surprised when they fail in our society.

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Adam B. Coleman is the author of “The Children We Left Behind” and founder of Wrong Speak Publishing. Follow him on X: @wrong_speak

This excerpt is published by permission from Wrong Speak Publishing.

The views expressed in this book excerpt are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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Let Jordan Neely’s Story Be A Warning To Parents: We Must Always Put Our Children First