'SoHo Karen' Miya Ponsetta trespassed and damaged NY apartment hours before assaulting Black teen over iPhone
'SoHo Karen' Miya Ponsetta has a history of creating trouble as it has been reported that before her notorious hotel incident, she allegedly trespassed a vacant NYC apartment and trashed the place. 22-year-old Ponsetta, notoriously dubbed the “SoHo Karen'', was charged on Saturday, January 9, for falsely accusing and attacking the 14-year-old son of Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold over a missing iPhone at the Arlo Hotel on December 26, 2020. She has been charged with four felonies: attempted robbery, attempted assault, attempted grand larceny, and endangering the welfare of a child. In addition to these, she also faces counts of drunk driving, public intoxication, and motor vehicle in her home state of California, where she was arrested after a short car chase on January 7.
While she was being charged, prosecutors mentioned another incident that happened earlier the day of the incident involving the 22-year-old. They accused her of damaging an apartment door. TMZ also got information from sources familiar with the apartment, and who alleged that Ponsetta used a fire extinguisher to enter the building and broke the doorknob to enter the apartment. When a tenant of the building confronted her, she allegedly told them she had rented the space through Airbnb and locked her keys inside. But according to TMZ , that building does not come under Airbnb's operations and the woman did not ever contact the management about renting the space.
As per reports, after trespassing the apartment, Ponsetta stayed inside for several hours and vandalized its curtains, left mail scattered on the floor, and tarnished the bathroom. Sources also said that the accused left debris in the hallway outside the apartment. After the alleged incident, police were called to the scene, but they could not arrest Ponsetta as she had already left. Also, cops were not able to enter the apartment because the door was so badly damaged they could not open it. Law enforcement sources said a report was filed against Ponsetta, who destroyed things worth $250.
Meanwhile, another report stated that the parents of the Black teenager, Keyon Harrold Jr, have called Ponsetta’s apology to them not “genuine”. While appearing for an interview with 'CBS This Morning', the woman told co-host Gayle King, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry from the bottom of my heart. He is honestly—he's 14? That's what they're claiming? Yeah. I'm 22. I've lived probably just the same amount of life as him. Like, honestly. I'm just as a kid at heart as he is.” She continued saying she was "sorry" for making the Harrolds suffer "all of that stress," but claimed that “it wasn’t just them going through that.”
She also added that her attack on the boy was not racial. “I wasn't racial profiling whatsoever. I'm Puerto Rican. I'm, like, a woman of color. I'm Italian, Greek, Puerto Rican,” Ponsetta stated. But Harrold Jr’s father said, “I feel like her apology was, you know, as genuine as when she shushed you,” pointing out how at one point during the interview Ponsetto said, “Enough!” to King when he asked a sensitive question. “It said a lot. I have an issue with the idea of entitlement versus character,” the father added.