Grammy-winning jazz musician Keyon Harrold posted a video on Sunday in which an unknown woman approached Harrold and his teenage son at a New York hotel on Saturday, falsely accusing the young man of stealing his phone.
“I hate having to post this,” Harrold, a Rolling Stone artist You Need to Know, wrote in the video caption. “I usually try to keep things positive, but nothing in this video is positive. The lady in this video assaulted my 14-year-old son and me when we came down from our room at Arlo Soho for coffee. This quote from the person in the quote ‘lost’ the iPhone and apparently my son acquired it magically, which is just ridiculous. “
The video shows a woman wearing facial cover, alternately hiding behind the hotel manager and charging Harrold and his son, Keyon Junior. The manager asks the boy to show the woman the home screen and Harrold refuses. In the caption, he writes that he was a current guest at the hotel, while the woman – who said she checked out on the 23rd – entered the street. She started to scratch him and grab her son. Harrold reports that the woman’s phone was soon returned by an Uber driver. “There are no excuses for her after this traumatic situation for my son, not for me,” he wrote. “No apology from the establishment. This shit happens so often. You need to stop !!! If someone recognizes this person, check or DM. “
Harrold said The New York Times he believed it was racially drawn by the woman: “I wonder what would happen if it were different, if it were a black woman and there was a 14-year-old white man,” he said. “They assumed he was guilty. Management didn’t even ask her why she would think he had the phone. “
The hotel apologized to the Harrold family in a statement: “We are deeply discouraged by the recent incident of unfounded accusation, prejudice and aggression against an innocent guest at the Arlo hotel.”
Harrold posted an update late Sunday, clarifying that he decided to post the video due to the hotel’s lack of sufficient response: “Before posting this video yesterday, we prayed about how it would impact us as a family and most of all how it would impact our son. We asked professionals for advice and weighed the decision for several hours. The only reason we decided to go public and post on social media was because the hotel, which had a security guard on duty, let this young woman out while waiting for the police to respond after she assaulted my son several times. “
Harrold submitted a police report on Saturday and the NYPD confirmed to the Times that they are investigating the incident. Harrold’s most recent statement also urges fans and colleagues to refrain from searching for the woman in question and doing justice after an incident in which a travel influencer was wrongly identified as the woman in the video, leading to an onslaught of anger over her Instagram page. “We are going to share the guilty part when we identify them correctly. Until then, do to others what you would like them to do to you, ”wrote the family.