FROM RANT TO RAP?
False accuser may face charges in phone fracas
The woman who wrongly accused a prominent jazz musician’s Black son of taking her iPhone in a SoHo hotel may be facing assault or attempted robbery charges, the NYPD’s top detective said Tuesday.
Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison said the out-of-state woman involved in Saturday’s encounter at the Arlo on Hudson St. near Canal St. has yet to be identified but is being sought.
She first started an argument “and then tried to attack [the] teenager by grabbing for his phone, grabbing his leg and trying to tackle him,” Harrison said.
The 14-year-old’s father, Grammy-winning trumpet player Keyon Harrold, shared a video of the incident on Instagram on Sunday. It shows the woman repeatedly demanding the teen hand over the phone as Harrold tries to shield his son.
“Show me the phone!” the woman says in the clip.
“This is my phone,” Harrold’s son replies.
“You don’t have to explain nothing to her,” Harrold says.
Keyon Harrold Jr. said Tuesday he’s still shocked over what happened.
“I’ve never seen that lady, ever, and I didn’t know what to do at the moment,” he said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “That’s why I was happy to have my dad here to help me.”
He added: “If you’re by yourself and you have no one to help you and no proof, it would have been a whole different story.”
The teen’s mom, Kat Rodriguez, said she felt fear after learning what happened.
“When my son asked me, ’Why me, Mom?’ that just hurt. The toughest answer that a parent has to give their child is, ‘Son, it might be because you’re Black,’” she told “GMA.”
Mayor de Blasio on Monday night called the incident “racism, plain and simple.”
“It would be horrific at any age, but it’s especially offensive that it happened to a child,” de Blasio tweeted. “To Keyon Harrold Jr. and his family: I am so sorry this happened to you. Her behavior was an affront to our city’s values.”
Harrison said the woman was trying to check into the hotel with her phone when she realized it was missing.
“Her phone was eventually returned to her, moments later, when an Uber vehicle pulled up and dropped the phone off at the hotel,” he said.
Police are looking for a full video of the incident. It’s not clear whether racial bias was involved, Harrison said.
“We don’t have that at this time. What we do have is a woman falsely accusing a teenager and trying to attack him to recover her phone, which was not her phone,” he said.
The hotel manager got involved at one point, trying to persuade the boy to listen to the woman.
“No, you can’t. This is my son,” Harrold says to the manager in the video.
“I’m trying to help,” the manager replies.
“You’re not helping. What you’re doing is disrespectful,” Harrold says.
The musician said he posted the clip to highlight another instance of Black people being falsely accused of crimes. “I am furious!!!” he wrote in an Instagram post. “We see this crap happening all the time, but it hits different when it hits home!!!”
Harrold’s Grammy-winning work on the trumpet has been lauded by Wynton Marsalis, and he’s been listed by Rolling Stone magazine as “an artist you need to know.”
He’s performed with artists like Common, Jay-Z, Beyoncé and Rihanna.