MANDEL: Chair Girl should lose phone, go directly to jail

Surely her 15 minutes were up long ago.

It’s time Chair Girl, aka Marcella Zoia, turns off her cellphone, stops preening and selfieing her puckered duck lips, and takes her ill-earned notoriety directly to jail.

Only then is there a chance that these publicity-seeking, self-obsessed millennial narcissists get the message that endangering others by doing something stupid on social media may earn them thousands of likes but it will also cost them their freedom.

“It was just jokes,” Zoia told her probation officer.

This was not funny.

As Crown Heather Keating said in her sentencing submission Friday, it’s “lucky someone didn’t get killed.”

As we all know ad nauseam, Zoia was filmed sending a wood and metal chair hurling off a 45th-floor balcony to the ground below last February, narrowly missing cars on the Gardiner Expressway and pedestrians walking below near the Lake Shore, including a woman pushing a stroller.

The video, which she admits was filmed on her cellphone but denies posting to her account on Snapchat, went viral and made Chair Girl into an international sensation.

It also proved to be conclusive proof of her crime. The aspiring medical aesthetician turned herself into police and pleaded guilty in November to mischief causing danger to life.

At her sentencing hearing, the prosecutor brought the mangled chair into the grand Old City Hall courtroom and argued denunciation and deterrence should be the key goals since Zoia has turned her infamy into a “brand” she’s still trading on to this day.

Zoia is now modelling and even had a fleeting cameo appearance in a Drake music video before the superstar had her edited out, saying “certain people we don’t condone.”

Zoia told her probation officer she hates all the attention. Like most of us, the prosecutor found that hard to believe.

Keating urged Justice Mara Greene to send the self-created social media sensation to jail for four to six months and order 240 hours of community service, alcohol abuse counselling and two years of probation.

“The public will be aware that when you do something like this, you will go to jail,” the Crown insisted.

But what might hurt her most of all, Keating also requested a ban on Zoia’s posting to social media for a period of time to be determined by the judge.

At that recommendation, Zoia suddenly stopped flicking her long blonde hair and examining her hot pink nails. It hardly seemed possible but her selfie pout face became even more puckered at the possibility.

Defence lawyer Gregory Leslie insisted a jail term and social media ban were too harsh — that Zoia was young, suffering from alcohol issues, peer pressure and ADHD. A suspended sentence and two years of probation would be punishment enough, he said.

Asked if she had anything to say, Zoia read from a handwritten statement: “I am sorry, I know that people could have been seriously hurt as a result of my actions,” she said.

“I never intended to hurt anybody and I know this was a very immature and stupid mistake, which I take full responsibility for.”

In a soft voice, Zoia added that she recognizes she needs counselling in alcohol and mental health and has a lot of “growing” to do. “Once again, I am very sorry for my actions, I am aware that someone could have been hurt or I could have caused an accident, that was never my intention.”

The prosecutor had a hard time believing she’s truly remorseful and also doubted Zoia’s claim that she wasn’t the one who posted the video.

“Quite simply this is nonsense,” she said.

Because for this generation, it didn’t happen if it wasn’t captured and shared on your phone.

During the proceeding, Zoia’s friend pulled out a cellphone and actually took her photo in court — despite being told by the ancient columnist behind her that it’s strictly verbotten.

She hissed at me.

Everyone expected — hoped — this never-ending Zoia saga was finally coming to an end on this day, but Greene announced she won’t deliver her sentence until March 12.

And so the circus continues.

Just before exiting the courthouse to the waiting throng of photographers and videographers, Chair Girl — the one who supposedly hates all the publicity — pulled out her phone to check her lipstick and her hair.

mmandel@postmedia.com