Dead Person Is Actually Only Slightly Dead

?Okay, don’t freak out. The above picture is, in the immortal words of Deep Space Nine‘s Senator Vreenak “a faaaaakkkke.” But when the residents of Worcester, England saw the photo on a Google Street View map of their area, they rightfully lost their minds and thought that a kid died in the street and no one noticed. Fortunately, it all turned out to be one of them there mix-ups with the Internets. Switched reports:

In an innocent hoax that tickles our schadenfreude bone (we think it’s
located somewhere near the patella?), a cherubic and awesomely named
Azura Beebeejaun — aged 10, and of Worcester, England — lay face-down
in the gutter. Azura cast her shoes aside for effect, and, naturally, a
Google Street View car doddered past, resulting in a multi-angled image of young Azura on Google, looking much like child-roadkill.
The photos ignited concern that there had been an unreported crime in
the neighborhood, but, after some quick detective work, Azura turned up
very much alive. She told The Daily Mail, “I’m quite chuffed I’m on the
Internet. It is quite funny and I can’t wait to tell my classmates when
I go back to school.”

The now-famous Azura had only been playing a game with her friend;
she’d tripped and decided to play dead, unaware that the Google cam was
planting the seeds of outrage. Local residents were quite obviously
disturbed by the image — and perhaps by the fact that the Google car
didn’t stop to investigate a child’s body lying in the road — but
Azura turned up alive, and everyone is probably having a grand ol’
chuckle about it now.

There’s a long history of people fucking with Google Street View cameras (just check out this photo gallery), but instead of some wacky culture jamming, this is a bona fide coincidence. It’s not even accurate to call it a hoax, as Beebeejaun claims that she didn’t even know about Google’s camera car was stalking her street. For the record, it would be a much cooler story if she was screwing with Google, but at least all’s well that ends well. It’s still a creepy photo though.