The woman who was arrested after a video showed her attacking and falsely accusing a black teenager of stealing her cell phone arrived in New York City overnight to face the charges, a police spokesman said on Saturday.
Officials from Ventura County, California, coordinated with the New York Police Department the arrest of the woman, Miya Ponsetto, on Thursday. She was arrested after a traffic stop near her home in Piru, about 40 miles from Los Angeles.
The deputies said that Ponsetto was unable to stop his car until she got home and later refused to leave. She was forcibly removed and arrested by an escape warrant. The 22-year-old was held in Ventura County until she was extradited to New York.
An NYPD spokesman said Saturday morning that Ponsetto is still being sued at the First Precinct in Manhattan and the charges were not immediately available.
A video of the incident shows Ponsetto approaching jazz musician Keyon Harrold and his 14-year-old son in the lobby of the Arlo Soho hotel. In the video, which was initially shared by Harrold, Ponsetto yells, “Show me my phone!”
A man in the video who identified himself as the manager can also be heard asking to see the teenager’s phone. At one point, Ponsetto refuses to let Harrold and his son go.
“No, he won’t go. Show me the proof,” she says.
When the father and son started to walk away, Ponsetto runs after them and yells for someone to get his phone back. The video ends with Harrold yelling, “Get your hands off!”
Another video released by the police showed Ponsetto running and attacking the teenager.
Ponsetto’s phone finally rang after she dropped him off in an Uber.
During a CBS interview “This Morning” that aired on Friday, Ponsetto tried to explain her actions while admitting that she could have handled the situation differently.
“Maybe I didn’t yell at him like that, and make him feel, you know, some kind of, uh, inferior way, making him feel like I’m hurting his feelings – that’s not my intention,” she said . “I consider it to be super sweet.”
While King pressured Ponsetto even more, saying that the video showed her attacking a teenager who didn’t have his phone, Ponsetto was agitated. “Okay, Gayle, enough,” she said, interrupting the journalist.
Lawyer Sharon Ghatan, who was sitting next to Ponsetto during the online interview, whispered to her to stop.
Ghatan had previously said the incident was not about race, saying his client “suffers from many anxiety attacks”.
“She was alone … 22 years in a city she doesn’t know, absolutely no one there and her phone had everything on it,” she said.
Harrold’s son said the altercation left him “in shock.”
“I would ask her why she would do something like this to a child who has never met you, and I would just ask why,” he said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” program on December 29.
