NEW YORK – The Marine veteran at the trial into the subway suffocation death of Jordan Neely called a forensic pathologist to the witness stand Thursday and reached a conclusion dramatically different from that of the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office.

“Suffocation did not cause death,” testified Dr. Satish Chundru.

Daniel Penny, 26, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of the main charge he faces, manslaughter, in the death of 30-year-old Neely.

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Dr. Satish Chundru arrives at a Manhattan courthouse Thursday to testify in the trial of Daniel Penny, a Navy veteran charged with manslaughter in the suffocation death of Jordan Neely. (Rashid Umar Abbasi for Fox News Digital)

In May 2023, he was heading to the gym after class at a college in New York when Neely, a homeless man with schizophrenia and a drug habitentered a subway car and shouted death threats.

Chundru, a former Miami-area medical examiner who now runs a private practice in Texas that performs autopsies in a half-dozen counties, said he does not believe an asphyxiation of air caused Neely’s unconsciousness and therefore , did not cause his death.

Chundru said he found the cause of death to be “the combined effects of sickle cell crisis, schizophrenia, struggle and restraint, and synthetic marijuana.”

Someone schizophrenic, high on K2 and involved in a fight can die with no suffocation involved at all, he said.

With the defense expert on the stand, dr. Cynthia Harris, who conducted the city’s autopsy, watched from the audience. She testified in the trial three days earlier.

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Daniel Penny arrives in Manhattan Supreme Court, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. Penny, a Navy veteran, is charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the 2023 death of Jordan Neely on a subway train in New york. (Rashid Umar Abbasi for Fox News Digital)

Harris found that it was the suffocation that killed Neely, not the synthetic drugs in his system, the genetic sickle cell disorder, or the cardiac arrest.

“This is a very complicated case,” Chundru testified. “We have schizophrenia involved, sickle cell trait involved, a suffocation.”

In addition, Neely had K2, a form of synthetic marijuana that experts testified was more similar to cocaine, in his toxicology report.

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Jordan Neely is pictured before going to see the Michael Jackson movie ‘This is It’ outside the Regal Cinemas on 8th Avenue and 42nd Street in Times Square in New York City in 2009. (Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Chundru said death by asphyxiation comes in two phases. In the first, the individual loses consciousness. In the second, sustained pressure leads to death.

“What is also important is that unconsciousness always follows death in a suffocation,” he said.

Dr. Cynthia Harris arrives for the trial of Daniel Penny at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse in New York on Friday, Nov. 15, 2024. Penny, a Marine veteran, is charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the death of 2023. Jordan Neely on a New York City subway train. (Adam Gray for Fox News Digital)

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However, rendering someone unconscious does not always mean they will die, he said. When they are released, they usually wake up, he said.

“In a sickle cell crisis, the death is a lack of oxygen, so the same (in) a death by asphyxiation,” he said.

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