A white woman who wrongly accused a black teenager of stealing his cell phone and approached him at a hotel in New York seemed to give up his apology in a TV interview on Monday, suggesting that he may have tried to steal his phone after all. .
“So, maybe it wasn’t him, but at the same time, how is it that as soon as I am asked to leave the place after I have accused this person of stealing my phone, how is it that suddenly they just miraculously have my phone behind? “Miya Ponsetto, 22, told CBS This Morning.
The interview took place on Thursday, hours before Ponsetto was arrested in Ventura County, California, during the December 26 clash with 14-year-old Keyon Harrold Jr.. Ponsetto was charged Saturday in New York with attempted robbery, theft, acting in an insulting manner to a child and two counts of attempted assault, according to city police.
Security video released by the police shows Ponsetto frantically grabbing Harrold as he tries to escape her through the front door of the Arlo Hotel in Manhattan. The teenager’s father, jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold, said Ponsetto’s phone had been left in an Uber and returned by the driver.
In the first part of the CBS interview, broadcast on Friday, Ponsetto told the host, Gayle King: “I don’t feel that way as a person. I don’t feel that one single mistake defines me. “
She was often combative in the clips that aired on Monday, interrupting King and his own lawyer, Sharen H Ghatan.
Ponsetto said he “felt it from the heart”, but added: “Is he 14? Is that what they are claiming? Yes, I’m 22, I probably lived the same amount of life, like, honestly. I’m just a child at heart like him. “
When King asked her to review the events at the hotel, Ponsetto said, “You already asked me that at the beginning of the interview. I won’t go over it again. I would like to have a real interview with real questions and real heart and real sincere apologies. May 2021 be the healing moment, really. “
Ponsetto’s arrest came after more than a week of media coverage of the meeting in the hotel lobby and demands from the teenager’s family and activists to face criminal charges for what was seen as a case of racial discrimination.
In the CBS interview, Ponsetto denied having profiled the teenager and said his inheritance was partly Puerto Rican. When King asked if she believed that a person of color could not be racist, she said, “Exactly.”
“I’m sorry for making the family go through all that stress, but at the same time it wasn’t just them who went through it,” she said in parts of the interview that aired on Friday. “But I sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, apologize if I made the son feel as if he had attacked him or if I hurt his feelings or the father’s feelings.”