A woman who falsely accused a black teenager of stealing his phone and then approached him at a New York City hotel she was arrested Thursday in her home state of California. Miya Ponsetto, 22, was arrested in Ventura County, said the sheriff’s office there. It was not immediately clear what charges she could face.
The New York Police Department sent detectives to California on Thursday 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.
Ponsetto’s lawyer, Sharen Ghatan, told the Associated Press in a pre-arrest interview that his client is “emotionally ill” and sorry for his December 26 conflict with 14-year-old Keyon Harrold Jr. at the Hotel Arlo in Manhattan.
Ghatan told CBS New York that the incident was not racially motivated.
The teenager’s father, jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold, recorded the confrontation and posted the video 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.
Ventura County Sheriff’s Office (California)
Ponsetto’s missing phone was left in an Uber and returned by the driver shortly after, Keyon Harrold said.
The altercation attracted comparisons with cases such as Amy Cooper, a white woman who was accused of filing a fake report for calling 911 and saying she was being threatened by “an African American man” during a dispute in New York’s Central Park in May.
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 “didn’t stop to pick up deputies until she got to her residence,” two blocks away, and then 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.
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.
Ghatan told CBS New York that Ponstto’s actions were induced by anxiety, not racially charged.
“She just wants the family to know that she didn’t notice, care or care about the other party’s race, creed, nationality or religion. She thought it was her phone and thought someone else had it.”
Police said they are not investigating the case as a bias incident, points out C BS New York.