Cops Solve Street View 'Murder'

With only a minute to act, a pair of Scottish pranksters who spotted a Google Street View car faked a murder realistic enough to cause at least one person to call the police. One of the Edinburgh mechanics lay in the road while the other stood over him holding a pick axe handle. "By complete fluke I saw the Google car coming along the road but it had to loop the block so I had one minute to rush back inside the garage and set up the murder scene," the "victim," Dan Thompson, tells the BBC. He points out that the car has captured "pictures of men flashing their bums" and thought this approach "would be more classy."

He says the picture was taken last summer and by the time police arrived to investigate the "murder," he had forgotten all about it. He apologized for wasting police time—but says the officers found the whole thing hilarious. His only regret: that they didn't have more time. "We would have went out mob-handed and really staged an elaborate tableau for the camera," Thompson tells the Edinburgh Evening News. (Click for another unusual Google Street View story involving a "spy.")