Someone looked through the window of a parked Subaru and panicked.
There she was, sitting in the passenger seat with her seat belt on: an elderly woman with glasses, an oxygen mask, and age spots on her hands, motionless, as Hudson, New York, froze at -13°C that Friday in December 2016.
They called the police, convinced the woman had frozen to death. An officer did not hesitate for a second: he smashed the window to get her out.
Inside, there was no woman… it was a CPR training mannequin, so realistic that it fooled an entire neighborhood, owned by a medical equipment salesman who used it to practice resuscitation.
The man came to pick up his car and found the window shattered — Police Chief L. Edward Moore described him as ‘quite vocal and vulgar’ with the sergeant.
Even so, the official warning was clear: if you leave a mannequin like that in your car on a freezing night, be prepared to pay for the window.