An unidentified woman falsely accused a black teenager of stealing her phone.
Photo: @ keyonharrold / Instagram
On December 26, Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold and his 14-year-old son were going for brunch at Arlo, a boutique hotel in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood, when they were intercepted by a restless woman in the lobby. The confrontation, which Harrold recorded on his phone and then shared on social media platforms, was ugly. In the video, the woman approaches Harrold and Keyon Harrold Jr., both black, accusing the latter of stealing his iPhone. She then furiously demands that the hotel manager help her – and to Harrold’s disbelief, the manager agrees, asking Harrold Jr. to hand over the phone. The video is cut when Harrold and his son try to leave the scene, after which the woman approaches the teenager, captured by surveillance images. The hotel later informed Harrold that the woman found her phone shortly after the confrontation.
Since Harrold shared the footage, it has gone viral, drawing comparisons to the notorious showdown between Amy Cooper and a Black birder bird in Central Park last summer. The video also spawned two separate investigations: one by the New York Police Department and one by the Manhattan District Attorney. According to New York Post, NYPD sources identified the woman – who was nicknamed “Soho Karen” – as Miya Ponsetto, 22. Here’s what we know so far.
When Harrold started recording his meeting with his wife at Arlo, where he had been staying as a guest since mid-December, the situation was already tense. In the video, the woman yells at Harrold Jr. to “take the case, it’s mine”, before demanding that the hotel manager “literally take it back”. When the manager asks Harrold Jr. if he can see the phone, Harrold is amazed. “Are you kidding me?” he asks the woman and the hotel manager. “Do you think there is only one iPhone made in the world?” The video ends when he and his son move towards the elevator to escape the unsuccessful confrontation. The woman then grabbed Harrold Jr. and tried to stick her hands in his pockets, which was captured for surveillance images that the NYPD released on December 30. “She scratched me; she approached him and grabbed him. He’s a child !!! “Harrold wrote on Instagram. Harrold told New York Times he was grateful to be there to protect his son. “I have seen people being injured or even killed for less,” he said.
Harrold says the hotel later told him that the woman had been a guest at the hotel earlier in the week and that, shortly after the incident, she found his phone. Apparently, he was in the lobby the whole time, where an Uber driver dropped him off after she left him in the car. Harrold says the woman did not apologize to him or her son.
As the video quickly went viral on social media, the incident was widely reported as another blatant example of racial discrimination, which the hotel managed to blatantly manage. As Harrold wrote on Instagram, the manager “empowered her !!!” and “did not even consider the fact that we were really the guests”. As he later elaborated to Times, “They assumed he was guilty. Management didn’t even ask her why she would think he had the phone. ”The family also told Washington Post that hotel security guard allowed the woman to leave while they waited for the police to arrive.
Arlo issued a formal apology on December 27, after the video was widely circulated. In a statement provided to the Times, the hotel apologized for not doing enough to “slow down the dispute”, characterizing the incident as an “unfounded accusation, prejudice and aggression against an innocent guest” and that “no Arlo guest – or anyone – should be subject to this type of behavior. ”The statement continued:“ We are committed to ensuring that this never happens again at any of our hotels ”.
On December 28, the Manhattan district attorney’s office told Intelligencer that the office is “thoroughly investigating” the incident. The NYPD also opened its own investigation and confirmed to BuzzFeed News that a harassment complaint has been filed. In a statement made by the famous civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, who is representing the family, Harrold called at the prosecutor’s office to bring charges of assault and battery against women, and to have a civil rights investigation in Arlo “for its implied bias”.
“As this year of racial awareness is coming to an end, it is deeply worrying that incidents like this, in which a black child is seen and treated as a criminal, continue to happen,” says Harrold’s statement.
Before the woman was identified in the press, she gave CNN a 20-minute telephone interview. The vehicle did not disclose the woman’s identity, citing “her safety concerns unrelated to this incident”, but noted that she is 22 years old.
In the interview, the woman challenged Harrold’s version of events, arguing that she was the one who was assaulted and claiming she had evidence to prove it. (CNN reports that she deleted it after agreeing to share the evidence.) The woman said she first tried to identify a possible phone thief asking to review the hotel’s security footage and then demanded that someone else in the lobby “empty” the pocket “. When she turned her eyes to Harrold Jr., however, “that’s when it got a little more serious.” The woman told CNN that the teenager had the phone in his pocket, which CNN was unable to confirm, and contradicts Harrold’s version of the story. Still, she said that although the NYPD had not contacted her, she was prepared to cooperate with the investigation. “I’m not like that,” she told CNN. “Actually … I try really hard to make sure that I’m always doing the right thing.”
On December 31, New York Post reported that NYPD sources identified the woman in the video as Miya Ponsetto; according to public records, only one woman by that name lives in the United States, and her last known address is in Simi Valley, California. O Post – and then TMZ – also looked at California court records, which show that Ponsetto and his mother were accused of causing a serious disturbance at a Southern California hotel in February 2020. By records, both women were charged with public intoxication, and the mother of Ponsetto faced an additional charge: battery from a public security worker.
This post has been updated.