*Miya Ponsetto, a.k.a. Soho Karen, cut off Gayle King by giving her the hand during their remote interview for “CBS This Morning,” not long before she was arrested in Ventura County on Thursday.
In the interview that aired Friday, the 22-year-old – flanked by her lawyer and sporting a black baseball cap that read “Daddy” – attempted to justify the Dec. 26, 2020, incident in which she tackled 14-year-old Keyon Harrold Jr. at a New York hotel, believing that he stole her iPhone, only to learn later that she left it in an Uber.
“I was approaching the people that had been exiting the hotel, because in my mind, anybody exiting is probably the one that, might be the one that is trying to steal my phone,” Ponsetto said.
“I admit, yes, I could have approached the situation differently or maybe not yelled at him like that and made him feel, maybe some sort of inferior way — making him feel as if I was, like, hurting his feelings because that’s not my intention. I consider myself to be super sweet. I really never ever meant for it to, like, hurt him or his father, either.”
Asked if she was stopping everyone who was leaving the hotel, Ponsetto admitted she was not.
Things took a turn, however, when King would not let her get away with her victim narrative and began drilling down on her physical reaction to the father and son.
“At the end of the day, the dad did end up slamming me to the ground and pulling my hair and throwing me and dragging me across the ground so, I, I will say that,” she tells King. “The footage shows me attacking his son, of attacking him how? Yelling at him? Yes, OK, I apologize. Can we move on?”
The interview continues with King mentioning the need for “more context” about Ponsetto’s behavior that day.
“OK, so basically I’m a 22-year-old-girl. I, I don’t, racism… how is one girl accusing a guy about a phone a crime? Where is the context in that? What is the deeper… what is the deeper story here?” Ponsetto responds.
King interjects: “You have to at least understand your actions that day. You seem to have attacked this little boy — this young boy, this teenager … about the phone and then it turned out: he did not even have your phone.”
After King tells Ponsetto that she’s “old enough to know better,” she puts her hand up to King’s image on the screen and says: “Alright, Gayle. Enough.”
With an attitude, she continued: “The hotel did have my phone. The hotel did end up having my phone. I did get my belongings returned to me.”
On Thursday, the New York Police Department flew detectives out to California with a warrant for Ponsetto’s arrest.
Watch the interview and Gayle’s reaction to being given the hand below or here on Twitter:
The 22-year-old woman caught on camera allegedly physically attacking a 14-year-old Black teen and falsely accusing him of stealing her phone was arrested in California.
In an exclusive interview, Miya Ponsetto and her lawyer spoke with @GayleKing hours before she was arrested. pic.twitter.com/ezaGkcWZ8j
— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) January 8, 2021
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