Billboard mannequin sparks 911 calls over suicide fears

[RainLover]

2015-01-26 UPI - Billboard mannequin sparks 911 calls over suicide fears.jpg (80.04 KiB) Viewed 2162 times

SPERRY, Iowa, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- An Iowa business owner said he had a mannequin removed from atop a billboard after police mistook it for a man attempting suicide and "conversed with him."

Brad Deery, owner of Deery Brothers of Burlington, said the mannequin atop the billboard along U.S. Highway 61 near Sperry was explained by the advertisement's caption: "I can see Deery Brothers in West Burlington from here."

"We put him up there and holy smokes," Deery told KWQC-TV. "I had no idea what would happen next."

The Des Moines County Sheriff's Department said about 20 people called 911 to report there was a man sitting on top of the billboard.

"We sent two cars out to check it out," Sheriff Mike Johnstone said. "Of course after dark it's very hard to determine that he is a mannequin. So, our deputies conversed with him for a short period of time and realized he wasn't real."

Johnstone said 911 calls continued to pour in about the mannequin after Tuesday's visit to the site.

"They all assume that it's a jumper," Johnstone said of the callers. "They think it is someone going to commit suicide and there's a lot of concern for his safety. He is very realistic so I understand that."

Deery said he decided to remove the mannequin from the billboard Friday.

"The police call him Manny the Mannequin but we call him Bill because he belongs on the billboard," Deery said .

"It definitely created a lot of interest and it was probably one of my more novel ideas," he said. "I'm just going to have to top it somehow."

Source:
http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2015/01/26/ ... 422281588/

[windave]

Thanks for sharing.

[LovesBlackWomen]

This stunt was done in my sister's high school, back in the 1960's. Kids would drop mannequins off the school roof when they saw people passing by.

[Obin]

I imagine the television coverage attained is worth more than the mannequin.

Fun story!

[katiesBoyfriend]

For years, engineering students at the University of British Columbia would pull some sort of prank in observance of their annual week of campus hi-jinx.

One year, (in the early 1970s, as I remember), they hung a VW Beetle from the Lions Gate Bridge, which crosses Burrard Inlet.

Another year, in that same time period, they really threw a scare into people. They actually hanged a mannequin from a bridge, maybe even the same one. Naturally, people were alarmed and informed the police. The local gendarmes were, understandably, less than amused and, as I recall, the students were reprimanded for the stunt.

By the time I was a grad student there, that sort of horsing around had subsided considerably.