Black Jazz musician shares footage of white woman falsely accusing his son of stealing iPhone

Keyon Harrold performing in Rotterdam in 2019

Credit: Peter Van Breukelen /Redferns 

A Grammy award-winning black musician has released footage showing a white woman accosting him and his teenage son, whom she falsely accused of stealing her iPhone in a New York hotel.

Jazz artist Keyon Harrold shared a video of the incident at the boutique Arlo Hotel in Manhattan’s SoHo neighbourhood on social media, saying: "We see this c— happening all the time, but it hits different [sic] when it hits home.”

In the footage, which has been widely shared online, an unnamed white woman can be seen approaching Harrold’s 14-year-old son in the lobby of the Arlo Hotel, falsely accusing him of stealing her mobile.

A hotel staff member then appeared to attempt to force the musician’s son to hand over his phone to prove that it was not stolen.

Harrold said that as the situation escalated, the woman "tackled and grabbed" his son.

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It later emerged that an Uber driver had found the woman’s phone and returned it to her at the hotel later the same day.

It is the latest in a number of videos of alleged racial profiling to create an online firestorm.

Earlier this year, there was a huge public backlash after a New York-based white woman was filmed calling the police on a black birdwatcher who asked her to leash her dog in Central Park.

Harrold said he did not know how to contact the unnamed woman

Harrold, a prominent trumpet player who won a Grammy in 2017 and has performed with artists including Beyonce, Jay-Z and Rihanna, said he believed that he and his son, Keyon Jnr, may have been racially profiled, but that he could not be sure of the woman’s race.

“I wonder what would happen if it were different, if it were a Black woman and there was a white 14-year-old,” he told the New York Times.

The Arlo Hotel later issued an apology for its treatment of Harrold and his son, saying it was “deeply disheartened about the recent incident of baseless accusation, prejudice and assault against an innocent guest”.