JORDAN NEELY WAS HERE

HE HAD PLACES HE BELONGED AND PEOPLE LOOKING OUT FOR HIM. HOW DID HE END UP DYING, ALONE, AT THE HANDS OF A STRANGER ON THE SUBWAY? 

- LISA MILLER

FOR A BRIEF PERIOD IN HIS LIFE, starting when he was 12, Jordan Neely had a home. It was on the first floor of a small yellow two-family house in Bayonne, New Jersey, where he lived with his mother, Christie Neely, and her boyfriend, Shawn Southerland. Jordan was Christie’s only child, and the two were “like peas in a pod,” his great-aunt Mildred Mahazu said, “wild about each other, like children playing.” Christie would wake him each morning by calling his name, and she’d fuss over him and insist on washing him before hustling him out the door to meet the bus at 7 a.m. Christie had a light, teasing manner with the people she loved, but with Jordan, she could be strict. Her rules included that Jordan couldn’t skip school and that he should never cook while alone in the house. Christie worked nights at a telemarketing firm near Herald Square in Manhattan, and when she got home, usually around 9:30 or 10 p.m., she’d poke her head into Jordan’s room. Jordan would say “good night,” then stay up playing video games until midnight.

Before moving to Bayonne, Jordan and Christie had stayed in several shelters in New York; Jordan’s 10th birthday passed at the Regent Family Residence, a transitional shelter on the Upper West Side where people go to right themselves as they find work or try to obtain affordable housing. Christie had family and places to live, but she was proud and independent and wanted a place of her own where she and her son could feel settled. While in the shelter, Christie had enrolled in classes to become a paralegal, and that’s how she met Southerland, who sat one seat over. When Christie rented the house in New Jersey, Southerland moved in.