It was a humerus mistake.
After responding to reports of human bones, English police were embarrassed to learn the alleged crime scene was actually a fake pirate skeleton.
A gardener had reportedly dialed emergency services after exhuming what he thought were human remains while digging at a house in Long Eaton, near Derby, Derbyshire, Jam Press reported.
“Officers from Long Eaton SNT were called to a suspicious incident today following a report that human bones had been found,” they described in a Facebook post detailing the mixup along with a photo of the find.
Shortly after that, Long Eaton police arrived at the suspected crime scene and checked out the so-called skeleton.
They immediately suspected something was off after noticing a strange hook in the “corpse’s” arm as well as the bird “skeleton” sitting on the stiff’s shoulder.
Officers soon realized the alleged murder evidence was actually a “toy model of Captain Hook and his pet parrot,” per the Facebook post.
However, as the call was made in “good faith” — and not as a sick prank — officers “left the toy to be disposed of by the homeowner.”
Meanwhile, swashbuckling social media users were on deck with jokes. “He was waiting for his wife to draw breath so he could get a word in,” wrote one Facebook user with a funny bone.
Another wrote, “Perfect crime would be to bury the body under the fake bones.”
While these remains were not bone-a-fide, police don’t regret responding to the scene of the fake crime. “It’s always better to be safe than sorry and report any suspicious incident,” they declared in the Facebook post.
This isn’t the first time authorities have mistaken a toy for a dead body.
In 2021, Japanese rescue divers were flummoxed after responding to the scene of a nude “drowning woman” — only to discover that it was actually a floating life-size sex doll.
That same year in the UK, a woman’s errantly-placed Halloween prop prompted a squad of 10 police officers to surround her home on the suspicion that she’d committed murder.
