Nov 12, 2007 7:53 pm US/Eastern
Great Grandmother Strip-Searched At N.Y. Casino
Woman, 65, Furious Over Treatment At Yonkers Raceway
YONKERS (CBS) ―
A great-grandmother from Mount Vernon is filing suit for allegedly being strip searched at the Yonkers Raceway casino. As CBS 2 HD has learned, the angry woman says it was over a winner's slip that was missing.
Myrna Jones is appalled at the way she was treated.
"I felt just humiliated, embarrassed," Jones said.
The 65-year-old said it was 13 months ago Monday when she was with friends at the Empire City Casino at Yonkers Raceway. She was playing video slot machines.
Jones says she was playing $1 slot machines. She won $80, but the machine did not spit out a paper winner's slip, so she called security and they called a mechanic to open the machine.
Meanwhile, she says she was taken to a room and interrogated by a man she says turned out to be a plain clothes state trooper who then accused her of hiding the winning slip, in an apparent scam to get another.
"He said, 'On camera it shows you put the ticket in your bra,'" Jones said. "I said no it shows me take out a dollar and put it in the machine."
But since a first look at the machine did not turn up the ticket, she was ordered into a room where a security woman conducted a strip search.
"I pulled up the sweater and unhooked the bra and she told me to pull up my shirt," Jones said.
"They kept me down there for two and a half hours. Then they came and said they found the ticket. I said where was the ticket? He said it was in the machine."
Jones is suing for an undetermined amount in damages saying she was humiliated and wants to prevent it from happening to anyone else.
A spokesman for Yonkers Raceway had no comment on the lawsuit. The State Police did not return our call.
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