Suspect in fracas over phone apologizes

NEW YORK — A woman who wrongly accused a Black teenager of stealing her phone and tackled him while being filmed at a New York City hotel apologized but defended her actions in a television interview conducted before she was arrested in California.

“I consider myself to be super sweet,” Miya Ponsetto, 22, said in a “CBS This Morning” interview that aired Friday. “I don’t feel that that is who I am as a person. I don’t feel like this one mistake does define me,” she said. “But I do sincerely from the bottom of my heart apologize that if I made the son feel as if I assaulted him or if I hurt his feelings or the father’s feelings.”

Ponsetto’s lawyer, Sharen Ghatan, said in an interview before the arrest that her client was “emotionally unwell” and remorseful for her Dec. 26 conflict with 14-year-old Keyon Harrold Jr. at Manhattan’s Arlo Hotel. Ghatan said the encounter was not racially motivated.

The teen’s father, jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold Sr., recorded the confrontation and put the video online.

In his video, an agitated woman demands the teenager’s phone, claiming he stole it. A hotel manager tries to intervene. Keyon Harrold tells the woman to leave his son alone. Ghatan confirmed Ponsetto is the woman in the video. Ponsetto’s missing phone had actually been left in an Uber vehicle and was returned by the driver shortly afterward, Keyon Harrold has said.

A spokesperson for the Ventura County sheriff’s office there said it wasn’t immediately clear what charges she faced.

The New York Police Department flew detectives to California on Thursday with a warrant for Ponsetto’s arrest. The trip followed days of intense media coverage of the fracas at the hotel and demands by the teen’s family and activists that she face criminal charges.