Who is ‘chair girl’ Marcella Zoia?
MARCELLA Zoia has avoided jail time for taking part in what the judge denounced as an "unnerving trend" on social media.
The now 20-year-old was instead slapped with a $2,000 fine, 150 hours of community service and will remain on probation for two years. Here's what happened...
Who is Marcella Zoia?
Marcella Zoia, from Toronto, Canada, was 19 when she rose to social media stardom in February 2019.
She now has over 60,000 Instagram followers and on July 21 uploaded a selfie of herself with her lawyer Gregory W. Leslie.
Zoia has done photoshoots in Miami and posted one video which led people to speculate she was taking cocaine - but she later submitted to a private drug test to prove she wasn't.
Zoia handed herself into officials after police saw a video of her throwing a chair go viral on social media.
Why is she nicknamed 'chair girl'?
Social media dubbed her "chair girl" after a stunt which saw her throw an Ikea chair off a 45th floor balcony on to a busy highway in 2019.
She pleaded guilty to a charge of mischief endangering life after footage of her stunt went viral.
Thankfully, no one was killed or injured but the judge put this down to "sheer luck."
When sentencing her, Justice Mara Greene said: “Zoia committed a very dangerous act. She did so for her own pleasure and vanity in the moment.
"It was a selfish act that could have led to disastrous results. It is only by sheer luck that someone was not hurt or killed.”
Zoia admitted someone recorded the chair-tossing on her cellphone but denied posting it to her personal Snapchat account, where it went viral.
The prosecutor asked for a six month sentence for Zoia but the judge said her youthfulness and rehabilitative potential kept her out of jail.
How does she know Drake?
While her reckless chair tossing incident plastered her name across global social media sites, she had dipped her toe in the waters of fame before when working with the rapper Drake.
On Christmas Eve 2019 the Canadian artist released his music video for War.
The video shows him skiing, snowboarding and chilling in a cabin with friends having a party.
And in the original release Zoia was seen in the cabin with a close-up shot in the blue-lit party scene with another woman and man - although her clip was removed.
When it came to light, Drake took to Instagram to tell his fans that he doesn't choose extras for his video and that "certain people we don't condone".
He released a new version of the video on Christmas Day - one day after the original version - with Zoe cut out.