A California woman who attacked a Black teenager at a New York hotel in December after she wrongly accused him of stealing her iPhone was forcibly arrested in the Los Angeles area this week.
On Thursday, Ponsetto was arrested by Ventura County sheriff’s deputies on a fugitive warrant in Piru, California, nearly two weeks after the confrontation that went wildly viral.
Ponsetto could now face additional charges following the allegedly rowdy arrest.
“The matter of her resisting arrest will be taken up with the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office for issuance of a possible warrant at a later time,” he added.
Manhattan prosecutors also confirmed Ponsetto’s arrest. She has not yet been charged as of Friday evening. She appeared in court on Friday and is expected to be extradited to New York in the coming days.
NYPD detectives had descended on Los Angeles after a fugitive warrant had previously been issued for her arrest. It’s unclear what the charges against her will be.
On Dec. 26, Ponsetto, who had misplaced her phone, was in the lobby of Hotel Arlo in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. She quickly locked eyes on Keyon Harrold Jr., a hotel guest who’d come to the lobby with his father to get something to eat. After seeing the Black teen’s own iPhone she apparently mistakenly became convinced it was hers — and attempted to have hotel staff confiscate the boy’s phone before attacking him.
Ponsetto was later filmed frantically chasing 14-year-old Harrold through the hotel entrance in her flip-flops. She later threw the boy to the ground, video footage of the incident shows. Her phone was ultimately recovered from an Uber, where she had left it. Ponsetto is originally from California. She was visiting her father in New York at the time of the alleged attack.
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