It “felt like” and “looked like” a baby — except it wasn’t.
A quick-thinking police officer in New Hampshire attempted to rescue an infant from a hot car last month, only to realize the child was actually a doll.
“It was draped with a light blanket, and I could see little feet out with the non-soled shoes and a bottle of milk,” Lt. Jason Short of the Keene Police Department told WMUR.
Someone had called 911 to report the baby left in a car at a shopping plaza on a hot day. Lt. Short saw what he believed was a baby in distress, and shattered the window with his baton.
He noticed something was off when he began to breathe into the baby’s mouth.
“I went to put my finger in its mouth and it was all resistance,” he told the station. “And I’m like, ‘This is a doll.'”
The doll is one of approximately 40 owned by Vermont resident Carolynne Seiffert, according to WMUR. She collects dolls to help her deal with the death of her son, the station reported. The doll in the car was named “Ainsley,” and is worth more than $2,000, the station reported.
“I’ve been laughed at and embarrassed by all the fuss,” she said in a statement to WMUR. “You can’t know how people choose to deal with their losses in life.”
The police department will reimburse her for the damage to the car, but Lt. Short said he had no choice but to break the window.
“I would never assume that it’s a doll,” he told the station. “I would always assume that it’s a child. I would never do anything different.”
He recommends that Seiffert leave the doll at home or take it into the store with her. She now has to put a bumper sticker on her vehicle to say the baby is actually a doll, according to the station.
“It felt like a baby,” Lt. Short told the station. “It looked like a baby. And — and everything about it was ‘baby.'”
