Toronto Balcony Chair Toss

Submission 16,393

Overview

Toronto Balcony Chair Toss refers to a nine-second Instagram video in which teenager Marcella Zoia throws a folding chair from a high-rise balcony towards a busy nearby highway.

Background

On February 9th, 2019, Lisa Calderon^[2] posted the video of the original Instagram post to Facebook which was widely shared that weekend. The video was shared over 10,000 times (shown below).

Police confirmed that the chair (among other items) was thrown on February 9th at 10 AM in the area of Harbour and York Streets in Toronto Canada.^[3]

Developments

On February 10th, Redditor MarnerAMagicMan posted pictures of the chairs mangled on the street in a comment to a /r/Toronto^[1] post dedicated to finding out the identity of the woman in the video (shown below)

On February 12th, Toronto police were informed of Marcella Zoia's deleted Instagram account. ^[3]

On February 13th, Twitter news source @CP24 posted "JUST IN: The woman accused of tossing a chair and other items off of the balcony of a downtown condo has turned herself into police, CP24 has learned" (shown below). The posted accumulated 468 retweets and 1,600 likes in a day.

That same day CBC news reported that "Marcella Zoia was charged with mischief endangering life, mischief damaging property under $5,000 and common nuisance […]and was released on $2,000 bail and ordered to live with her mother" after a a short court appearance that day. ^[6] That day, Twitter user @RMadonik^[4] posted pictures of Marcella Zoia leaving court (shown below).

After the release of Zoia's identity, Twitter users took to posting screenshots of her now deleted Instagram account. On February 12th, @kriztoper1978^[7] tweeted "Maybe she threw the chair of the balcony while on the job as a maid? #Toronto#ChairThrower" (shown below, left). The next day, @FaithGoldy^[5] tweeted "Hands up if you knew Toronto Chair Girl was going to be a barely legal thot with an Instagram account laden with thot thotty thottery 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️" (shown below, right). The tweet gained 95 retweets and 360 likes in a day.