'Karen' accuses Grammy-winner Keyon Harrold's son, 14, of stealing iPhone after she left hers in an Uber
Grammy-award winning trumpet player Keyon Harrold took to Instagram on Saturday, December 28, to post a video where an unidentified white woman was seen accusing his son of stealing her iPhone at a New York City hotel, only to discover moments later that it was left behind in an Uber.
The musician recorded the video in which the woman was seen lunging at him and his 14-year-old son as she desperately tried to claim that the iPhone in Harrold's son's possession belonged to her. "I hate I have to post this!!! I am furious!!! We see this crap happening all the time, but it hits different when it hits home!!! I typically try to keep things positive, but nothing about this video is positive. 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. This person quote on quote 'lost' her iPhone, and apparently, my son magically acquired it, which merely ridiculous," the musician wrote as the caption to his post.
In the clip, the unidentified woman is seen getting the attention of the hotel manager by claiming that the Black teen had taken her phone. As the teenager said, “This is my phone,” Harrold intervened, telling him: “You don’t have to explain nothing to her.” As the woman continued to frantically insist that it was her phone and asked the teen to prove that it was not, Harrold replied: “Are you kidding me? You feel like there’s only one iPhone in the world?”
When the manager of the hotel tried to resolve the situation by asking to see the wallpaper on the teen’s phone, Harrold responded: “No! This is my son!” The woman, making the claims was not even a guest of the hotel at the time, she had stayed in the hotel but checked out on December 23. While the video was only a minute long Harrold said in the post that the incident lasted for over five minutes. “Now watch as the manager advocates for the lady who is not even a hotel guest, insisting and attempting to use his managerial authority to force my son to show his phone to a random lady,” Harrold posted. “He actually empowered her!!! He didn’t even consider the fact that we were actually the guests.”
In the video, she can be seen continuously lunging and toward Harrold as he was shielding his son from her. At one point, she ended up on the floor, after seemingly losing her balance. “She scratched me,” Harrold wrote, “She tackled and grabbed him. He is a child!!!”
Harrold posted that her iPhone was finally found when an Uber driver returned it to her after the incident was over. However, the father-son duo never received an apology for the accusations hurled at them by the woman. “No apology from her after this traumatic situation to my son, not me,” Harrold stated. “No apologies from the establishment. This s— happens too often. It needs to stop!!!”
After the video went viral, the Arlo Hotel issued a statement on Sunday, December 27, condemning the woman’s actions. “We’re deeply disheartened about the recent incident of baseless accusation, prejudice, and assault against an innocent guest of Arlo Hotel,” the statement read. “In investigating the incident further, we’ve learned that the manager on duty promptly called the police regarding the woman’s conduct and that hotel security intervened to prevent further violence; still, more could have been done to deescalate the dispute."
The company added, “No Arlo guest — or any person — should be subject to this kind of behavior. We want to apologize to Mr. Harrold and his son for this inexcusable experience, and have reached out to them directly to express our sincere regret and to offer help in dealing with this traumatic event. We are committed to making sure this never happens again at any of our hotels.”