We have previously written about parents going shopping and leaving their babies in cars during hot days. Doing so is not just irresponsible but dangerous. If left to long, the child could suffer from a heatstroke, faint and possibly even die.
It happens often enough for police officers to be alarmed about the situation and keep a look out for any babies in parking lots during very hot days.
One such police officer is Jason Short from Keene, New Hampshire. He was on duty when he received a call about a baby that was left in a car alone in a Walmart parking lot on a very hot day.
But he never in his mind would have imagined what would happen next.
Jason didn’t hesitate for a second when the call came in about an infant left in a hot car.
“I got there as soon as I could,” he told WMUR. “I don’t know how fast I was going, but it was quick.”
When he arrived, he immediately spotted what appeared to be a baby wrapped in a blanket, its tiny feet visible through the window. With the sun blazing and no idea how long the child had been inside, Jason acted fast—shattering the window with his baton to get the baby out.
He carefully pulled the small figure from the vehicle. It looked pale, motionless, and lifeless. Fearing the worst, Jason laid the baby down and began CPR as a crowd gathered and someone called for an ambulance.
But something felt… off.
As he continued CPR, a strange realization hit him. The texture, the weight—it wasn’t right.
That’s when it dawned on him: what he was holding wasn’t a real baby at all. It was a hyper-realistic doll.
The doll’s owner, Carolynne Seiffer, returned from her shopping trip to find a crowd gathered around her car and a smashed window. The source of all the commotion? Her hyper-realistic $2,000 doll, which she lovingly calls Ainsley.
“I’ve been laughed at and embarrassed by all the fuss,” Carolynne told WMUR.
As reported by The Washington Post, Carolynne owns around 40 of these lifelike dolls, which she uses to help cope with the heartbreaking loss of her son. For some grieving parents, these realistic dolls serve as a form of emotional healing.
“You can’t know how people choose to deal with their losses in life,” she said.
Though Officer Jason Short was a bit embarrassed to realize he’d broken into a car to rescue a doll, he says he has no regrets only relief that it wasn’t a real child in danger.
“I would never assume it’s a doll,” he told WMUR. “I’d always assume it’s a child. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
The Keene Police Department later covered the $300 cost to replace Carolynne’s broken window.
You can watch the full news report from Inside Edition below:
This story is rather unusual but the most important thing is that no one was harmed. If you do happen to own one of these dolls, police recommend that you leave them in your car’s trunk, or carry it with you for obvious reasons.
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