SoHo 'Karen' under NYPD probe after accusing Keyon Harrold's son of stealing her iPhone and 'tackling' him
After Grammy-award winning trumpet player Keyon Harrold took to Instagram on Saturday, December 28, and posted a video of a White woman inside the Arlo Hotel in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, accusing his son of stealing her iPhone in the lobby, the New York Police Department and the Manhattan's district attorney's office said that they were probing the harassment complaint.
The unidentified woman in the video has been branded “Karen,” a name infamously given to a White woman who is accused of using racial privilege over others. Harrold’s attorney, Ben Crump, tweeted that they want the district attorney’s office to press assault and battery charges on the woman who “falsely accused” the teenager of stealing her phone. “Join us in sending a clear message that hateful, racially motivated behavior is unacceptable,” Crump wrote. “Email Manhattan DA Cy Vance Jr. and urge him to charge the woman who attacked Keyon Harrold Jr.”
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?”
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."
Meanwhile, Instagram user Cassandra Medina, who posted a photo at the hotel six days ago, denied being the “Karen” in Harrold’s video. “I’ve been tagged all morning in this video and this is not me,” Medina wrote on Instagram on Sunday. “It’s not OK to be falsely accused on social media and I wouldn’t want that happening to anyone.”