The father of the Black teen who was wrongly accused of stealing a woman's iPhone says his son is "seriously traumatized," TMZ reported on Sunday.
Keyon Harrold, a Grammy-winning jazz musician, told TMZ that he was considering therapy for his 14-year-old son, Keyon Jr., after the incident at a hotel in New York City late last month. Harrold told The New York Times that he thought it might have been racial profiling.
On December 26, Harrold posted a video, which now has nearly 3 million views on Instagram, showing a woman telling a manager of the Arlo Hotel in SoHo that the teen took her phone. Harrold said the woman tackled and grabbed Keyon Jr.
"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," Harrold wrote in the caption. He added that the woman "'lost' her iPhone, and apparently, my son magically acquired it, which merely ridiculous."
Harrold said the manager "empowered" the woman. He added that a few minutes later, an Uber driver returned the phone to the woman. He said he and his son did not receive an apology from her or the hotel.
As Insider's Kelsey Vlamis reported, the hotel apologized after the footage sparked outrage on social media. It said that "more could have been done to deescalate the dispute."
"This could have gone very wrongly if I had come down after my son," Harrold told WABC-TV on Sunday. "The idea of trauma goes above any charge that we may have."
He added: "I bring my son places where he shouldn't have to deal with injustices and shouldn't have to be profiled."
Video: What police de-escalation looks like
The police identified the woman as Miya Ponsetto, 22, the New York Post reported on Friday. She told CNN that she worried about facing charges and about how she was portrayed in the video.
"Of course I worry. That's not who I am," she said. "I actually ... try very hard to make sure that I am always doing the right thing." She also claimed that she was assaulted during the incident but didn't provide evidence, CNN said.
The woman hasn't been charged, but WABC-TV reported that the police were looking into whether to bring charges against her ranging from assault to attempted robbery. Activists have said Ponsetto is a California resident and are calling for her arrest, the report said.
The civil-rights attorney Ben Crump and the teen's parents have called on Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance to charge Ponsetto. NBC News reported on Thursday that the district attorney's office was investigating the incident.
"There are thousands of Black men in prison because they were racially profiled and falsely accused, so this has larger implications," Crump said at a press conference on Wednesday. "I mean, it was Emmett Till who was falsely accused and racially profiled that led to him being lynched. And so it is a larger conversation that has a larger impact on society."
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