The California woman who allegedly attacked a black teenager in New York City after falsely accusing him of stealing his cell phone – seen in a video that went viral – sat down for a bizarre and controversial interview just hours before being arrested in connection with the confrontation.
Miya Ponsetto, 22, spoke with Gayle King of “CBS This Morning” for an interview that aired on Friday – and was filmed not long before the woman was arrested in Ventura County on Thursday.
Flanked by his lawyer and wearing a black baseball cap with the word “Daddy”, Ponsetto tried to justify his explosion on December 26, 2020 and apologized to Keyon Harrold Jr., 14, and his father, the famous jazz musician Keyon Harrold.
“Okay, Gayle. Enough.”
“I was approaching the people who were leaving the hotel, because in my head who is leaving is probably the one who is trying to steal my phone,” said Ponsetto.
“I admit, yes, I could have approached the situation differently or maybe I didn’t yell at him like that and make him feel, maybe somehow inferior – making him feel like I was, like, hurting his feelings because that’s not my intention. I consider myself a super sweet. I never really wanted that, like, to hurt him or his dad, either. “
When asked if she was stopping everyone leaving the hotel, Ponsetto admitted that she was not and said she was trying to find her phone while the hotel manager checked the images from the surveillance cameras.
“How would you feel if you were alone in New York and, you know, spent time with your family on vacation and lost the one thing that was stolen from you and that has all the access to the only way you can go home? ” she asks.
But the interview got off track when King started to probe Ponsetto more about his behavior and the video that shows him knocking the teenager to the floor.
“At the end of the day, Dad ended up throwing me on the floor and pulling my hair and throwing me and dragging me across the floor, so I, I will say that,” she told King. “The footage shows me attacking your son, how to attack him? Yelling at him? Yes, OK, I apologize. Can we move on?”
The interview continues with King mentioning the need for “more context” about Ponsetto’s behavior that day.
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“Okay, basically I’m a 22-year-old girl. Me, I don’t, racism … like a girl accusing a guy on the phone is a crime? Where’s the context in that? What’s the deeper … What’s the story deeper here? “Ponsetto replies.
King interrupts Ponsetto to say, “You have to understand at least what you did that day. You seem to have attacked this little boy – this boy, this teenager … over the phone and then it turned out: he didn’t even have yours. telephone.”
After King says the 22-year-old is “old enough to know himself better,” Ponsetto gestures with his hand in front of the computer that projects King’s video and says, “Okay, Gayle. Enough.”
“The hotel had my phone. The hotel ended up having my phone. I got my belongings back to me,” says Ponsetto at the end of the interview.
On Thursday, the New York Police Department sent detectives to California with a Ponsetto arrest warrant. The trip came after days of intense media coverage of the riot at the hotel and demands from the teenager’s family and activists to face criminal charges.
A NYPD spokesman told Fox News on Friday that Ponsetto was in the process of extradition, but had not yet been returned to the Big Apple to face the charges.
Ponsetto’s lawyer, Sharen Ghatan, said in a pre-arrest interview that his client is “emotionally ill” and remorseful. Harrold Sr. recorded the confrontation and shared it online.
In his video, an agitated woman is seen demanding the teenager’s phone, claiming he stole it. A hotel manager tries to intervene. Keyon Harrold can be heard on the recording telling the woman to leave her child alone. Ghatan confirmed that Ponsetto is the woman in the video.
The security video released later by the NYPD shows Ponsetto frantically grabbing the teenager while trying to escape her through the hotel’s front door. She saw him grabbing him from behind before they both hit the floor.
This reserve photo provided by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office in California shows Miya Ponsetto. Ponsetto, who falsely accused a black teenager of stealing his phone and then approached him at a New York hotel on December 26, 2020, was arrested on Thursday, January 7, 2021 in his home state of California. (Ventura County Sheriff’s Office via AP)
(Ventura County Sheriff’s Department)
Ponsetto’s missing phone was left in an Uber and returned by the driver shortly after, Keyon Harrold said.
Ventura County sheriff’s delegates arrested Ponsetto after seeing her driving near her home in Piru, northwest of Los Angeles, said Captain Eric Buschow.
She drove two blocks before stopping the vehicle, but refused to get out of the car, said Buschow.
“She tried to slam the door on one of the policemen and that’s when they reached her and forcibly removed her,” he said, adding that the sheriff’s office would ask county prosecutors to accuse her of resisting arrest.
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Ghatan said he spoke to his client on Thursday, and that “she seems like a person who is not well”.
She said that Ponsetto “attacked” with concern over the disappearance of his phone and that there was no racial motivation.
“It could have been anyone,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Harrolds’ lawyer, prominent civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, refuted allegations that Ponsetto was sorry and beat the police and the hotel for empowering “individual acts of racism”.
Keyon and Kat Harrold, the teenager’s parents, released a statement on Thursday that said “it is not about an apology from someone who until a few days ago claimed that she did nothing wrong and actually claimed that Keyond Harrold Str had attacked her “.
Nor, they said, was it about “someone who targeted a 14-year-old black child because of the color of his skin.”
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“This is a significant change in society,” says the statement. “Our energy now goes towards healing our son and to draw attention to the broader social issues that led to the repulsive physical and verbal attack … This should never have happened.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.