UPI – A woman in New Zealand was startled when she discovered what seemed to be a headless corpse on the beach, only to feel relieved when the police identified it as a life-sized adult toy.
Alice Cowdrey was walking with her dog, Sadie, on Tapuae Beach, located south of New Plymouth in the Taranaki region, when Sadie led her to the object washed up on the shore.
“I just sort of froze, and felt sick,” she told Radio New Zealand.
“I could see it was definitely the shape of a torso, face down, and I could tell it was a woman’s figure. I could see it had fingernails and the toes were really realistic, so it really looked like a human figure.”
Cowdrey called police and three officers responded.
“And then I sort of saw one of the cops nudge it with his foot, and I thought, he’s not going to nudge it if it’s a body,” Cowdrey said.
She said the identity of the object became clear once it was flipped over.
“You could tell it was a doll,” she said.
She said the dummy was so heavy that it required all three officers to drag it back to a patrol vehicle.
Police in Malaysia responded to a similar situation in 2022, when a reported body found behind a motorcycle shop turned out to be a discarded mannequin.
Other incidents involving mannequins and dolls have been reported in California, Ohio and the Netherlands.
