85-year-old woman wants apology after mattress store calls police, has her removed

MIAMI TOWNSHIP — An elderly woman said she had the police called on her for simply trying to review her bill.

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Officers responded to the Sleep Number near the Dayton Mall in Miami Township because the manager claimed the woman was trespassing.

Dewberry came prepared with her papers looking to speak to the manager at Sleep Number to go over her bill, but she says he was immediately rude to her and then tried to make her talk to someone else on the phone.

“He just picked up the phone, he shoved it toward me. He didn’t even hand it to me he shoved it towards me,” she said. “I said ‘Sir, I got dressed to come down here to talk to a person not on the phone again.’”

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She says he then told her to leave, she said no and called her husband, and that’s when the manager called the police.

“He was ready, you know they’re really buff, and he was ready,” she said. “I call my husband ‘Honey you better get down here. It looks like I’m going to jail.”

The manager said Dewberry, who was 84 at the time, was trespassing and then threatening to cause a riot by calling her husband. She was escorted out.

“I was nervous. I was dropping things. The cops had to pick this up and that up,” Dewberry said.

In a statement obtained by News Center 7, a spokesperson for Sleep Number said Dewberry “became verbally aggressive with our team while questioning her signed purchase agreement and refused to leave after multiple requests. Police were called to defuse the situation, and the officers ultimately decided to remove her from the property.”

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The NAACP is now involved and wants answers.

“You have me as the president that went out there on site,” said Dr. Derrick Foward, President of the Dayton Unit NAACP. “Eventually told that the manager was not there.”

This is not stopping Dewberry from pushing for an apology.

“What I want to happen? Is this not happening to someone else,” she said.

The NAACP said at this time Sleep Number has not reached back out to them regarding what happened.

We will continue updating this story as we learn more.

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