Police Respond to Report of Body Found at New Orleans City Park, Turns Out to Be a Mannequin

On Monday morning in New Orleans City Park, there was quite a ruckus involving what many people thought was a dead body.

Around 7:00 am, Manning Krull was taking his regular morning walk through the park when he saw something "really freaky." He said it appeared to be an unconscious or dead person surrounded by police as an ambulance drove up.

"I couldn't see their gender or their face, and I didn't see anything that looked like blood," he told NOLA.com. "It just looked like a person lying there in a folded-up position. ... It was very disturbing, to the point that I didn't tell my wife."

Reports of the disturbing sight quickly made their way around social media. "I saw it while bringing my kid to school. Horrifying," wrote one person on Nextdoor. "God have mercy on the poor victim," wrote another.

Thankfully, what people thought they saw was not actually what they saw. It was not a real person but a mannequin. A really life-like one apparently.

The posting on Nextdoor was updated to read: "It appears to have been a mannequin and thankfully no one got hurt."

According to City Park police, it was simply a mannequin that someone had thrown by the side of the road.

Krull said living in such a crime-plagued city has affected his reaction to things like what he encountered on his walk.

"My heart sunk, even though it seemed like a mannequin," he said. "I didn't allow myself to hope. There are so many horror stories all the time."