AN AMATUER photographer prompted police frogmen to comb a reservoir when he accidentally snapped what looked like a child’s hand poking out of the water.
Although the hand turned out to belong to a child’s doll, the amateur photographer who made the discovery has been commended as a model citizen.
Keen birdwatcher Ronald Churchill from Harrow had been trying out his new camera near the reservoir in Cricklewood on Thursday afternoon, when he photographed a flock of ducks swimming near some reeds.
It was only when he uploaded the images onto his computer later that day that he discovered the disturbing image.
“Suddenly I saw this hand sticking up and it gave me a bit of a surprise,” he said. “I blew it up as much as I could and it did look very realistic.
“My first reaction was ‘it is a doll, a mannequin or someone is having a joke’ but then I thought it looked too real not to tell someone about it.”
The 75-year-old contacted Barnet Police who accompanied him to the reservoir that evening, but officers decided to suspend the search until daylight.
The underwater search team returned the following morning to trawl through the water and the search was called off at midday when officers found doll.
The grandfather-of-two said despite the false alarm he had no regrets about contacting police. “The officers said it was their job,” he told The Press. “It could have been something and if I hadn’t done anything and it had been something it would have been much worse.”
A spokesman for Barnet Police said: “It turned out it was just a doll’s hand, but the man did exactly the right thing by contacting us.”
Barnet Today