'Bones' in river turn out to be plastic skeleton

A magnet fisherman's grim discovery of bones in a river turned out to be a plastic skeleton, police said.

Lewis Bright, who clears trolleys and bikes out of rivers in Chelmsford, thought he had found human remains on Saturday.

He called Essex Police at 17:21 BST, and officers went to the scene to put up a cordon and retrieve the discovery.

A spokesperson for the force said: "It was a toy or medical demonstration skeleton. Certainly not human and not any other kind of real bones. All plastic."

Mr Bright said he was trying to clear the River Can with other helpers when they found two trolleys.

"We had five people pulling on the rope... one of the trolleys was about 30 years old, and something fell out of them. When we looked, we just saw bones come up from the river.

"I felt shocked to actually find something like it, and my immediate reaction was to call 999 as we didn't know anything at the time other than what we saw.

"They [police] asked me if they could use my equipment to get them out - I said 'sure'.

"It makes me feel better knowing it wasn't a real one."

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