A 19-year-old Toronto woman is out on bail and facing multiple criminal charges after video of a chair being thrown from a downtown highrise balcony sparked outrage among neighbours and on social media.

Marcella Zoia turned herself in to Toronto police at 52 Division around 7 a.m. Wednesday and was charged with mischief endangering life, mischief involving damage to property and common nuisance.

The short video allegedly showing Zoia tossing a chair off an upper-floor balcony toward the busy, multi-lane Gardiner Expressway hundreds of feet below went viral over the weekend. The chair landed on a sidewalk near the condominium tower. No one was injured.

After she was released on $2,000 bail Wednesday, Zoia left the courthouse with her mother and declined to make any comment, saying she would let her lawyer speak on her behalf.

“She’s a young lady, and a mistake happened. This is not a case whereby, we don’t know who did it ... Ms. Zoia is the one who threw the chair,” her lawyer, Greg Leslie, said outside court. But, he added, it’s clear from voices in the background of the video, that she was under “peer pressure” and suffered from a “momentary lapse of judgment.”

Leslie said the teen is embarrassed and finding her arrest and media attention “traumatic,” despite smiling and seemed relaxed both in court and surrounded by photographers and reporters. “She has no experience dealing with the press,” he said. “I would not make any adverse inference to that at all.”

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The lawyer added he has been in contact with the police since Sunday, “and she’s been doing everything to co-operate with the police.” She wished the incident never happened, and never wanted anyone to be hurt, he said.

Zoia is in school training to be a dental hygienist and working in nightclubs providing bottle service to “high-end clientele,” Leslie said. Her bail conditions require her to live with her mother, Maria Zoia, who lives in North York and works as an industrial cleaner.

Justice Rebecca Rutherford rightly refused to impose bail conditions, as requested by the Crown, that she not be above the fifth floor of a building nor be on a balcony, Leslie said.

She is prevented from attending any addresses at 55 or 65 Bremner Blvd., the north and south tower of Maple Leaf Square Condos, or to have any contact with four people who were inside the condo unit. She was also ordered not to possess any weapons.

Toronto criminal defence lawyer Daniel Brown, who is not involved in the case, said the most serious charge Zoia is facing — mischief endangering life — could, if she’s convicted, lead to anything from no criminal record to life in jail. He cautioned a more serious sentence would only be likely in a case involving factors such as a prior criminal record, alcohol or drugs and a large number of lives endangered.

“What kind of opens the door for a potential jail sentence is whether or not that chair actually landed on a major roadway or thoroughfare and whether or not it endangered the lives of others on the road,” Brown said.

The two other charges carry less severe punishments if convicted, Brown said.

In a news release, police said the video was shot around 10 a.m. Saturday in the Harbour St, and York St. area. In it, a young woman can be seen picking up a folding chair and tossing it over the railing. The person filming then follows the chair for several seconds as it hurtles towards the busy highway. The clips ends just before the chair hits the ground.

Police later said a second chair and other items were tossed as well.

Police have not identified the person who filmed the video.

Const. David Hopkinson on Wednesday said detectives are investigating whether the apartment unit in the video was being rented as a short-term rental.

In a statement to the Star, Airbnb spokesperson Ben Brait said the company has no evidence Zoia has ever been an Airbnb user, but has suspended the account of a guest with a reservation at the building, pending review.

“We are outraged by the blatant disregard for community safety on display in the video,” he said.

Brait said Airbnb is co-operating with Toronto police.

Jenna Periti, who says she was a former high school classmate, told the Star that Zoia is a bright person who “was always hanging out with the wrong people.”

“I know Marcella and I know unless a group of people encouraged her it was a good idea, she would not have done it,” Periti said.

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Periti said Zoia had an Instagram account that was deleted shortly after the video gained notoriety. That account had nearly 6,000 followers, according to an online archive.

Ajax woman Tyler Walton told the Star she believed she rented the same apartment unit in the south tower of Maple Leaf Square Condos through Airbnb on Saturday night, hours after the chair-throwing incident.

She said she saw the broken chairs on the street in front of the tower’s Lake Shore Blvd. W. entrance and later noticed the unit did not have the balcony set shown in the online listing. She said she didn’t put two and two together until she saw the video.

“I saw the chairs outside on the street and joked to my boyfriend that they looked like they were thrown,” she said. “He didn’t think anyone was dumb enough to do that.”

The online listing for the unit — Walton said it’s a south-facing apartment on the 45th floor — includes pictures of a patio set that appear to match the chairs in the video.

Walton said she asked the Airbnb host if the unit should have had a balcony set, and was told yes.

Walton said the Airbnb host told her to arrive later than the regular check-in time because the previous guests had left it “a disaster.”

When contacted by the Star, the Airbnb host confirmed Walton had stayed Saturday night, but said they were on vacation and had not had a chance to investigate the chair-throwing case.

Property management at Maple Leafs Square Condos declined to comment on the case.

Thorben Wieditz, researcher and spokesperson with the Fairbnb advocacy group, said it’s not unusual to hear residents in downtown highrises in the area complain about problems caused by short-term rentals.

“It’s very common for partiers and Airbnb guests to throw stuff off the condos. What we haven’t seen yet is something like those two chairs that could have very well caused death,” he said.

“The vast majority of incidences occur in what we call ghost hotels, the commercial Airbnb rentals that are operated by hosts that have multiple entire homes,” he said.

City of Toronto rules to regulate Airbnb and similar services, including a ban on short-term rental of units not regularly occupied by the owner, are on hold pending appeal to a provincial tribunal.

Asked Tuesday if the current lack of rules is contributing to bad renter behaviour, Mayor John Tory said it’s not fair to blame the city for what was seen on the video.

Delay in clamping down on short-term rentals is “not a matter of the slowness of the city, it’s a matter of the (appeal) process taking its course,” Tory told reporters. “I’m confident that these regulations will be found to be valid and we can move forward to enforce them.”

City council passed the rules, which also include a ban on short-term rental of self-contained basement apartments, in December 2017. But some Airbnb hosts protested they are unfair.

The Local Planning Appeal Tribunal has scheduled five days in late August to hear arguments from unit owners appealing the city rules.

Zoia has been ordered to live with her mother, Maria, who will be her surety.

She is scheduled to return to court at Old City Hall on March 22.

With files from Jack Hauen, May Warren, Gilbert Ngabo, Alexandra Jones and David Rider.

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