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Woman praised by police after mistaking umbrella for suicidal person

The Twitter user thought she saw ‘a woman dressed as a handmaid about to jump from a building’.
The Twitter user thought she saw ‘a woman dressed as a handmaid about to jump from a building’. The Twitter user thought she saw ‘a woman dressed as a handmaid about to jump from a building’.

A woman in New York has been praised by police for alerting them to a possible suicide attempt after she mistook a closed umbrella for a person.

Casey McCormick tweeted she thought she saw “a woman dressed as a handmaid about to jump from a building” and called 911.

The sighting turned out to be a table umbrella which, from a distance, looked much like a handmaid from the seminal Margaret Atwood novel The Handmaid’s Tale.

The New York Police Department’s news account made it clear on Twitter that McCormick had done the right thing in alerting the authorities.

“Blessed be the umbrella. Thank you Casey and the @POPSUGAR team for alerting us to this crime, glad we could save the day,” they tweeted.

“Jokes aside, if you’re ever hesitant about calling 911 – don’t be! We take all calls seriously, and worse case we get to go home with a great story.”

“Better safe than sorry!” one Twitter user replied.