Bringing Out Your Fake Dead Brings Out the Cops

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Police showed up three times Tuesday and a few more times Wednesday and Thursday after receiving reports of a dead body in a Detroit woman’s yard.

Trick or treat.

The suspected corpse was Larethia Haddon’s Halloween dummy, something she has placed in her yard every year for the past 25, she says to “bring a little laughter to Detroit” and to celebrate her husband’s Halloween birthday.

Haddon told WXYZ-TV that she lets police and emergency rescue services now about her annual prank so her Halloween fun won’t tie up police resources, but they still respond.

This year, the realistic-looking dummy has attracted more attention than in others.

“I used to live in Redford Township, and oh God — the police department, fire department, they would come out every day,” Haddon told The Detroit News. “Everywhere I’ve ever lived, it’s always been this way. But this year, for some reason, it’s getting a lot of attention.”

She moves the dummy around the yard of her tidy brick home on Detroit’s west side, placing it face down in different areas every morning and then watching from her window at the reactions from passersby.

“People are running up trying to do CPR,” she said. “Once they find out it’s a dummy, it’s so hilarious.”

Darlene Hall was one of those good Samaritans ready to spring into action and perhaps save a life.

“I would have turned him over and gave him CPR,” Hall told WXYZ.

Hall said she’s not trying to make people feel like, well, dummies.

“I want everyone to know, this is a practical joke,” she told the TV station. “I don’t mean any harm. I just want to see a smile on people’s faces.”

Hall no longer leaves the fake corpse out overnight after, ahem, body snatchers helped themselves to her seasonal lawn ornament two years ago.