Falsely accused boy's family speaks out as tense interview with 'SoHo Karen' airs

NEW YORK - A white woman who wrongly accused a Black teenager of stealing her cellphone and tackled him at a New York City hotel appeared to back off her apology in a TV interview that aired Monday, suggesting without evidence that maybe he did try to steal her phone after all.

"So, maybe it wasn't him but at the same time how is it so that as soon as I get asked to leave the premises after I had accused this person of stealing my phone, how is that all of a sudden they just miraculously have my phone at the back?" Miya Ponsetto, 22, said in the interview on "CBS This Morning."

The interview was conducted Thursday, hours before Ponsetto was arrested in Ventura County, California, over the Dec. 26 confrontation with 14-year-old Keyon Harrold Jr. Ponsetto was charged Saturday in New York with attempted robbery, grand larceny, acting in a manner injurious to a child and two counts of attempted assault, according to city police.

Later Monday morning, Harrold Jr.'s parents, their attorney Benjamin Crump and the Rev. Al Sharpton, held a news conference at City Hall Park demanding Ponsetto and the Arlo Hotel be held accountable for the incident.

"Don't we all see right through this act?" said Kat Rodriguez. "This woman is a symbol of the privilege that is destroying this country.  And now she chooses to embrace the Puerto Rican part of her heritage as an exercise of privilege and  convenience in hopes of avoiding a hate crime?"

Security video released by the police shows Ponsetto frantically grabbing at Harrold as he tries to get away from her through the front door of Manhattan's Arlo Hotel. The teen's father, jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold, has said that Ponsetto’s phone had actually been left in an Uber and was returned by the driver.

In the first part of the CBS interview, broadcast Friday, Ponsetto told host Gayle King, "I don’t feel that that is who I am as a person. I don’t feel like this one mistake does define me."

She was frequently combative in the clips that aired Monday, interrupting King and her own attorney, Sharen H. Ghatan.

• Woman who falsely accused black teen of stealing phone arraigned in NYC

Ponsetto said she was "sorry from the bottom of my heart" but added, "He's 14? That's what they're claiming? Yeah, I'm 22, I've lived probably just the same amount of life, like honestly. I'm just as a kid at heart as he is."

When King asked her to go over the events at the hotel, Ponsetto said, "You already asked me that at the beginning of the interview. I'm not going over it again. I would like to have a real interview with real questions and real heart and real sincere apologies. Let 2021 be the moment of healing, seriously."

Ponsetto's arrest followed more than a week of media coverage of the hotel lobby encounter and demands by the teen’s family and activists that she face criminal charges over what was seen as an instance of racial profiling.

In the CBS interview, Ponsetto denied profiling the teenager and said her heritage is partly Puerto Rican. When King asked her if she believed a person of color could not be racist, she said, "Exactly."

"I feel sorry that I made the family go through all that stress but at the same time it wasn’t just them going through that, "she said in a "CBS This Morning" interview that aired Friday. "But I do sincerely from the bottom of my heart apologize that if I made the son feel as if I assaulted him or if I hurt his feelings or the father’s feelings."

With the Associated Press