Woman who attacked and falsely accused Black musician’s son charged with attempted assault

The woman who was caught on video falsely accusing the 14-year-old son of a popular Black musician of cell phone theft has been charged with two counts of attempted assault, New York police said.

Miya Ponsetto, 22, of Piru, California, also faces attempted robbery and grand larceny charges as well as a charge of acting in a manner injurious to a child after an incident last month in New York, the New York Police Department said in an email.

Ponsetto was arrested Thursday in Piru and has been extradited to New York, a spokesperson for the New York Police Department told CNN.

The boy’s father, jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold, posted a video on December 26 taken with his phone that shows the woman making claims against his son at the Arlo SoHo boutique hotel.

“The lady in this video assaulted my 14-year-old son and me as we came down from our room in the @arlohotels Arlo Soho to get breakfast,” Harrold wrote in an Instagram post.

Ponsetto said she had lost her phone, and “apparently, my son magically acquired it,” Harrold wrote, calling the claim “ridiculous.”

It is unclear if Ponsetto has an attorney in this case.

Ponsetto, in a CBS “This Morning” interview taped before her arrest in California on Thursday, apologized and admitted she could have handled the situation differently.

She insisted in the interview that race was not a factor and that her actions were not criminal.

The NYPD said they were not investigating the incident as a case of racial bias.

“I was approaching the people exiting the hotel,” Ponsetto told CBS in a sometimes tense interview, “because in my mind anybody exiting…might be the one that is trying to steal my phone.”