Since Daniel Penny’s trial began, witness after witness has described the abject terror they felt while riding the uptown F train as Jordan Neely, a deranged homeless man He got into the car, growling and threatening the hanged men.

One teenage girl testified that she was so scared she thought she would faint.

an older woman He was “very scared.” A 29-year-old man said he was “pretty terrified.”

They all testified that they had never before experienced that kind of acute panic while riding the train.

But on Tuesday one was visibly petrified to be in that room, with protesters outside and multiple Neely’s followers inside.

Afraid of being on the stand. Being part of a possible acquittal for Penny and what that would mean for her personal safety.

And it was the fear of losing his freedom, Eric González said, that made him Initially make up parts of your story. to the researchers.

Gonzalez, 39, was the man in the black cap seen in the now-familiar footage from May 1, 2023, helping restrain Neely’s flailing arms as Penny strangled him with the key that killed him.

The Bronx resident testified that he arrived at the Broadway-Lafayette subway station while the train was stopped and encountered the physical struggle taking place on the dirty subway floor.

“Everyone was frantic and saying ‘call the police,’ so I assumed one was trying to hold the other down until the police arrived,” he said.

Gonzalez told the jury he “jumped up and tried to help.”

But after later learning that Neely had died and Penny had been arrested, Gonzalez was so scared of being “charged with murder” that he took his entire vacation from work and went into hiding.

And he now admits that when he initially spoke to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, he made up parts of his story.

Two weeks ago, González was granted immunity to testify.

Yes, he admitted to lying about being at the scene much earlier and that Neely hit him, prompting Penny to spring into action. All this to save his own skin.

The admission destroyed his credibility as a witness. But that did not make González an unsympathetic figure. His efforts to help Penny, including wrestling with Neely, taking the man’s pulse and turning him on his side in a “recovery” position, were captured on video and examined frame by frame.

The footage showed that both he and Penny were trapped by the old saying “no good deed goes unpunished.”

Despite his deal with the prosecutor, Gonzalez was still worried about what would happen if his testimony helped set Penny free.

“Are you afraid of people seeking to have my client prosecuted?” asked Penny’s defense attorney, Steven Raiser.

“Yes,” Gonzalez said.

Raiser added: “You are afraid that if you testify in a way that is helpful to my client, you may suffer repercussions, correct?”

Affirmative.

“With all these protests, I am afraid for myself and my family,” said González, a father of two, underscoring the political charge of this farce of a criminal case.

Throughout his testimony, González’s face went from deer-in-the-headlights horror to shame at having been caught in a hoax, the kind of shame that sends a Catholic straight to the confessional.

But taking his words out of the equation, the video showed that González intervened without fear.

Both he and Penny activated their instincts to protect New Yorkers from the Gotham City-like chaos and violence plaguing the subway at the time.

Now one is facing almost two decades behind bars. And the other, it seems, did everything possible to avoid being an assistant again.

The perverse and dangerous lesson: don’t get involved next time.