USA TODAY International Edition
Woman charged in NY hotel confrontation
NEW YORK – A California woman who wrongly accused a Black teenager of stealing her phone and tackled him at a New York City hotel was charged Saturday with attempted robbery, grand larceny, acting in a manner injurious to a child and two counts of attempted assault.
NYPD detectives flew to California on Thursday with a warrant for the arrest of Miya Ponsetto, 22, of Piru, California.
Ponsetto’s confrontation with Keyon
Harrold Jr., 14, on Dec. 26 at Manhattan’s Arlo Hotel was recorded and posted online by his father, jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold. The video shows an agitated woman demanding the teenager’s phone, claiming he stole it. The phone was found soon afterward in an Uber.
Security video released by city police shows Ponsetto grabbing at the teenager as he tried to get away from her through the hotel’s front door.
Ponsetto apologized but defended herself.
“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 in a “CBS This Morning” interview that aired Friday. “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.”
At her arraignment Saturday, a judge gave Ponsetto supervised release and granted orders of protection in favor of the victims.
Defense attorney Paul D’Emilia said Ponsetto was innocent of the charges, and the case “will be resolved in our courts and not through social media.”
“We are puzzled and disappointed that at this time of heightened tensions in our country that the authorities chose to exacerbate the situation by needlessly flying members of the NYPD across the country, into the teeth of COVID, to bring back a person who would have returned with a simple telephone request,” D’Emilia said in an email.