Police responded to a call from a “very upset citizen” in Upstate New York who said that an elderly woman had “frozen to death” in her car, only to discover that the woman was not really a woman.
The Hudson Police Department said that it “received a call from a very upset citizen who stated that she discovered an elderly woman ‘frozen to death’ in her Subaru parked along City Hall Place, Hudson. Officers, and the Greenport Rescue Squad were immediately dispatched,” according to ABC News.
Police officers responded to the parked car to discover what looked like a dead, elderly woman wearing an oxygen mask in the front seat. But upon closer inspection, they found that the woman was not dead–or a woman. It was a realistic-looking, life-sized mannequin with glasses, teeth, skin, and blemishes on its face, police said.
Police eventually tracked down the car’s owner, a sales manager for a company that makes medical training aids, who was not happy with police for breaking into his car, the Albany Times Union reported.
The mannequin’s owner said he occasionally takes the dummy in his car strapped in with a seat belt.
“It is my understanding that the owner was incredulous that we took action in this matter,” Chief L. Edward Moore said in a press release. “He apparently was quite vocal and vulgar to my sergeant.”
“Just to clear the record, all citizens of Hudson should be put on notice that if you park your locked vehicle on the street on a sub-zero night with a life size realistic mannequin seated in it … we will break your window,” he added.
Hudson Police Sgt. Randy Clarke told WAVY that the call was a “burden on emergency services.”
“If it was a joke, it was a very poor, tasteless joke,” he said. “If it was a matter of convenience for him, he was driving a station wagon, carrying a mannequin in the front seat with the seatbelt on appearing to be a passenger in a car.”
No charges were filed.
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