Halloween decoration fools 911 caller

Buy a print

A Craftsman lawn mower serves as a Halloween decoration beside Organ Church Road on Monday after tricking a passing motorist into calling 911. Photo by Nathan Hardin.

Buy a print

By Nathan Hardin

nhardin@salisburypost.com

A passing motorist on Organ Church Road called 911 Monday morning after seeing what appeared to be a bloody body pinned under a lawn mower.

But authorities quickly learned that the body was actually a graphic Halloween decoration placed near the road by a neighbor.

“It wasn’t too long after we dispatched a call that we found out it was a Halloween decoration,” said 911 center shift supervisor Autumn Davis.

The attention-grabbing gag, set up in the yard at 3475 Organ Church Road near Rockwell, wasn’t surrounded by any other Halloween decorations on Monday. The set-up depicts a body with bloodstained jeans trapped under the blades of a riding lawn mower, with a can of beer in its hand.

Chris Deaton, the man behind the mower, said this is his second year with the decoration, and said he did it because it got great reviews last year.

“It’s cool for a Halloween ornament,” he said.

Deaton said he hadn’t been contacted by authorities or passing motorists, but he didn’t think the decoration was offending anyone.

He got the idea from someone else’s yard, Deaton said, while traveling to the beach one year.

Last year, Deaton kept the mower closer to the house, so only those on his driveway could see it.

This year, though, he wanted to try it closer to the road.

Deaton said he hasn’t put any other Halloween decorations around the mower because he figures it’s going to get stolen and he doesn’t want anything else taken.

“That’s the only thing it’s good for,” Deaton said about the mower, which no longer has a working motor in it.

“It’s probably going to be stolen and sold for scrap metal,” he said.