Woman hedges apology in tense interview on hotel attack

NEW YORK — A white woman who wrongly accused a Black teenager of stealing her cellphone and tackled him at a New York City hotel appeared to back off her apology in a TV interview that aired Monday, suggesting without evidence that maybe he did try to steal her phone after all.

“So, maybe it wasn’t him but at the same time how is it so that as soon as I get asked to leave the premises after I had accused this person of stealing my phone, how is that all of a sudden they just miraculously have my phone at the back?” 22-year-old Miya Ponsetto said in the interview on “CBS This Morning.”

The interview was conducted Thursday, hours before Ponsetto was arrested in Ventura County, Calif., over the Dec. 26 confrontation with 14-year-old Keyon Harrold Jr. Ponsetto was charged Saturday in New York with attempted robbery, grand larceny, acting in a manner injurious to a child and two counts of attempted assault, according to city police.

Security video released by the police shows Ponsetto frantically grabbing at Harrold as he tries to get away from her through the front door of Manhattan’s Arlo Hotel. The teen’s father, jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold, has said that Ponsetto’s phone had actually been left in an Uber and was returned by the driver.

In the first part of the CBS interview, broadcast Friday, Ponsetto told host Gayle King, “I don’t feel that that is who I am as a person. I don’t feel like this one mistake does define me.”