In a scene straight out of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, a concerned passerby in Georgia took action and called the police after she saw what appeared to be a man dangling from the window of a house.
Recommended Stories
The woman was passing by a home with her two children in Gwinnett County, Ga., when she saw a man hanging in Clark Griswold fashion. But the gent was actually a mannequin, set up as pat of an elaborate Christmas display, Atlanta’s WSB-TV reported.
“I opened the door, there were fire trucks, ambulance, fire marshal, police car and six firemen,” Bubba Murphy, who owns the home, told WSB-TV.
The concerned woman called 911, claiming she had seen a hanging man surrounded by Christmas lights, and they answered, arriving at the home in full force.
“We saw the ambulance. We didn’t know what was going on because [we] live right down there, we are just hoping everyone was OK,” a neighbor said.
Elaborate Christmas displays are a holiday stable of Murphy’s neighborhood, and his hanging mannequin even came complete with a fallen ladder. But after the incident, fire crews advised Murphy to remove the display.
“That is our biggest response so far,” he said. “We’ve had people come up and jump out of their cars, the mail man and the neighbor, they ran up to help.”
The woman, Murphy said, apologized to him, his wife, Dawn Murphy, and first responders.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Dawn Murphy said. “I thought someone was pranking us, but nobody would prank us with that many county resources.”
Despite the fire crew’s advice, the Murphy’s put the display back up — all in the spirit of Christmas.
