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The father of the black teenager who has been falsely accused of stealing a woman’s iPhone says his son is “severely traumatized,” TMZ reported Sunday.
Grammy Award-winning jazz musician Keyon Harrold told TMZ he was considering therapy for his 14-year-old son Keyon Jr. after the incident at a New York City hotel late last month. Harrold told the New York Times he thought it may have been racial profiling.
On December 26, Harrold posted a video, which now has nearly 3 million views on Instagram, showing a woman telling a manager at the Arlo hotel in SoHo that the teenager had picked up her phone. Harrold said the woman attacked and grabbed Keyon Jr.
“The lady in this video assaulted my 14-year-old son and I as we walked down from our room at @arlohotels Arlo Soho to have breakfast,” Harrold wrote in the caption. He added that the woman “had” lost “her iPhone, and apparently my son magically acquired it, which is just ridiculous.”
Harrold said the director had “empowered” the woman. He added that a few minutes later, an Uber driver returned the phone to the woman. He said he and his son had not received an apology from him or the hotel.
As Insider’s Kelsey Vlamis reported, the hotel apologized after the images sparked outrage on social media. He said “more could have been done to defuse the conflict”.
“It could have gone very badly if I had come down after my son,” Harrold told WABC-TV on Sunday. “The idea of trauma goes above any accusation we might have.”
He added: “I take my son to places where he shouldn’t have to face injustice and shouldn’t have to be profiled.”
Video: what police de-escalation looks like
Police identified the woman as Miya Ponsetto, 22, the New York Post reported on Friday. She told CNN that she was worried about facing charges and how she was portrayed in the video.
“Of course, I worry. It’s not who I am, ”she said. “I actually try really hard to make sure I’m always doing the right thing. She also claimed to have been assaulted during the incident, but did not provide evidence, CNN said.
The woman has not been charged, but WABC-TV reported that police were seeking to lay charges against her ranging from assault to attempted theft. Activists have said Ponsetto is a resident of California and are calling for her arrest, according to the report.
Civil rights lawyer Ben crump and the teenager’s parents called on Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance to indict Ponsetto. NBC News reported on Thursday that the district attorney’s office was investigating the incident.
“There are thousands of black men in jail because they have been racially profiled and falsely accused, so this has bigger implications,” Crump said. said at a press conference Wednesday. “I mean, it was Emmett Till who was falsely accused and racially profiled that led to him being lynched. And so it’s a larger conversation that has a bigger impact on society.”
Read the original article on Insider
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