This is an example of someone seeing something that wasn’t quite what it seemed. Driving along the M62 highway in the U.K., a passing motorist thought he saw a female being assaulted by a man in a car. The passer by saw what he thought was a struggle, as well as some blood on woman’s face. The alleged incident occurred along the road that stretches between the cities of Manchester and Liverpool.
The witness dialed the police emergency number (which is 999, in the U.K.) at 5.45 p.m. and two police officers were duly sent out to track down a “man biting a woman.” Identifying the suspect car close to junction 11 (where the highway veers off towards the towns of Birchwood and Warrington), the police officers flagged the vehicle over.
Instead of a major assault, inside the car the officers found a couple of jobbing actors (Diane Holden and Steve Lowe) covered in fake blood. The two were on their way back from an acting job, where they had been performing as extras disguised as zombies for a television production. The man and the woman still had fake blood on them since they had been in a hurry to leave the production set.
Speaking with Sky News about the case of misreporting a spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Police said: “We got a call to reports of a man biting a woman on the M62 at junction 11 and being assaulted. Officers were sent out to search for the vehicle as it is a serious incident.”
So far, so good. Police respond quickly to what could be a major crime. However, as the police spokesperson adds: “But when they found the car in question, they saw they were covered in fake blood. Thankfully the man and woman were extras on their way to a job and it was a funny ending really.”
The news prompted one Twitter user to tweet: “report of female being assaulted on M62, vehicle stopped pair of extras making to a job – posing as Zombies – takes all sorts!”
The director of the television production, Peter Mckeirnon, told The Guardian that Diane Holden and Steve Lowe were returning home after filming. “We were filming the very last scene of the last episode and we took all day,” Mckeirnon states. “Steve and Diane jumped in the car and drove off before getting pulled over. It was so out of the blue.
Mckeirnon explains further: “We were filming so long that they had to rush off and didn’t have time to take their makeup off.”
