Viral Video Shows White Woman Falsely Accusing Jazz Trumpeter Keyon Harrold’s Son of Stealing Cellphone
A recently surfaced viral video shows a white woman angrily and falsely accusing a Black musician’s 14-year-old son of stealing her cellphone — and then lunging at him. Now that musician wants everyone to know the lengths he had to go to in order to protect his son.
Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold recently took to Instagram to show the confrontation between his son and an unidentified woman at New York’s Arlo Soho hotel on Saturday (Dec. 26) which took place because the woman believed the boy stole her phone.
The video depicts the woman frantically arguing with a hotel manager. “Take the case off, that's mine,” she protests. “Literally, give it back.”
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Harrold responded by saying, “You think there’s only one iPHone made in the world,” before the woman lets them know that she won’t let them leave the hotel and then lunges at them.
The video, posted to Instagram on Sunday (Dec. 27) garnered more than 1 million views.
Harrold explained the situation in the tense video’s Instagram caption. “This person quote on quote ‘lost’ her iPhone, and apparently, my son magically acquired it, which [is] merely ridiculous,” he wrote. “This incident went on for five more minutes, me protecting my son from tis lunatic. She scratched me; she tackled and grabbed him/”
Harrold went on, explaining that the woman wasn’t even a guest of the hotel and had checked out three days later. He also revealed that the hotel manager supported the lady and attempted to make his son show his phone to the woman.
“Now think about the trauma that my son now has to carry, only coming downstairs to have box day brunch with his dad,” Harrold continued. The musician then revealed that the assailant later found her phone when it was returned to her by an Uber driver a few minutes after this incident occurred.
“We see this crap happening all the time, but it hits different when it hits home!!!” he wrote, explaining its implications for racial profiling. “I typically try to keep things positive, but nothing about this video is positive.”
A spokesman for the Arlo said that Harrold and his son did recieve an apology from the manager and acknowledged that the situation could have been handled better, according to The New York Post. The woman never apologized for her erroneous behavior.
“We’re deeply disheartened about the recent incident of baseless accusation, prejudice and assault against an innocent guest of Arlo hotel,” the hotel said in a statement.
