Responding to “very upset” calls about a frozen woman in a parked car in New York, ABC News reports that police busted a window to save her. But as realistic as her clothes, glasses, hair and facial blemishes appeared to be, the woman turned out to be a CPR mannequin. The mask apparently didn’t give it away.
The “frozen” and scarily lifelike mannequin was inside of a snow-covered car in the upstate New York city of Hudson, and the department said in a press release that a citizen called to say she “discovered an elderly woman ‘frozen to death’ in her Subaru parked along City Hall Place, Hudson.” The release said officers and a rescue squad were immediately dispatched.
ABC News reports that it was about eight degrees when the officers and rescue squad arrived at the car, and the snow led them to believe it had been parked there overnight. A police sergeant broke the back window and opened the door, only to realize that the woman was actually a life-sized mannequin.
This isn’t the only incident of its kind. A New Hampshire police officer broke a car window in July to save a baby left in a hot car, and actually began CPR on the child before realizing it was a lifelike doll that the owner used to cope with the death of her son.
But this doll was for a different purpose. The car owner eventually returned and told police he was a sales manager for a company that manufactures aids for medical training, and that the woman was a CPR mannequin. Why she was so lifelike in contrast to the usual CPR dummy, the report didn’t say.
But police didn’t seem to like that explanation, and no matter how lifelike the mannequin was, weren’t thrilled that the owner of the car had her sitting in the passenger seat with a seatbelt on—like a real person would be. From ABC News:
“I can’t put what he said on air, but he was not very happy with the police department for forcing entry into his car,” Hudson Police Department Sgt. Randy Clarke told ABC affiliate WTEN. “If it was a joke, it was a very poor tasteful joke. If it was a matter of convenience for him — it was a station wagon — carry your mannequin a little bit better. The mannequin was in the front seat with a seat belt and appearing to be a passenger in the car.”
Police said there are no charges pending in the incident, according to ABC News.