A woman who falsely accused a black teen of stealing her phone and then took it down was arrested in her home state of California on Thursday at a hotel in New York City. Miya Ponsetto, 22, was jailed in Ventura County, the sheriff’s office there said. It was not immediately clear what allegations she might face.
New York police flew detectives to California with a warrant for arrest against Ponsetto earlier Thursday. The trip followed days of intense media coverage of the hotel fracas and demands from the teen’s family and activists to face criminal charges.
Ponsetto’s attorney, Sharen Ghatan, told The Associated Press in an interview before the arrest that her client is “emotionally unwell” and is remorseful over her December 26 conflict with 14-year-old Keyon Harrold Jr. at the Arlo Hotel in Manhattan.
Ghatan told CBS New York that the incident was not racially motivated.
The teenager’s father, jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold, recorded the showdown and put the video online.
In his video, an annoyed woman is seen demanding the teen’s phone and claiming it stolen. A hotel manager tries to intervene. Keyon Harrold can be heard in the recording telling the woman to leave his son alone. Ghatan confirmed that Ponsetto is the woman in the video.
Security video later released by the NYPD shows Ponsetto frantically reaching for the teen as he tried to get away from her through the front door of the hotel. She clutched him from behind before they both fall to the floor.
Ventura County (California) Sheriff’s Office
Ponsetto’s missing phone had actually been left in an Uber and was returned by the driver shortly after, Keyon Harrold said.
The altercation produced comparisons to cases such as that of Amy Cooper, a white woman accused of filing a false report for calling 911 and said she was threatened by “an African-American man” during a dispute in New York’s Central Park in May.
Ventura County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Ponsetto after seeing her driving near her home in Piru, northwest of Los Angeles, ward captain Eric Buschow said.
She “didn’t stop for deputy sheriff until she reached her home” two blocks away, then refused to get out of the car, Buschow said.
“She tried to slam the door of one of the deputies and then they just reached her and forcibly removed her,” he said, adding that the sheriff’s office would ask the prosecutors to charge her with resisting arrest. .
Ghatan said she spoke to her client earlier Thursday, and that “she comes across to me as someone who is unwell.”
She said Ponsetto “lashed out” because he feared her phone would disappear and that he was not racially motivated.
It “could have been anyone,” she said.
Ghatan said CBS New York Ponstto’s actions were fear-driven, not racism.
She just wants the family to know that they didn’t notice, care, or care about the race, belief, nationality, or religion of the other party. She thought that was her phone, and she thought someone else had it. ”
Police have said they are not investigating the case as a bias incident, CBS New York points out.