Someone mistook a group of meditating yoga students as the victims of a “mass killing” and made a police report.
The Seascape Cafe in Lincolnshire, England, said in a statement that the police rushed to their building on Wednesday night after receiving a report of a mass killing.
“If anyone heard the mass of police sirens in Chapel St Leonard’s at 9.30pm last night, then please be reassured,” said the statement, which was published on Thursday.
“They were on their way to the observatory after someone had reported a mass killing in our building. Having seen several people laying on the floor … Which actually turned out to be the yoga class in meditation,” the cafe said in the statement.
Seascape Cafe is located in Lincolnshire’s North Sea Observatory. The marine observatory opened in 2018 and hosts exhibitions in the local area, per the Lincolnshire County Council’s website.
Seascape Cafe’s statement added that the observatory “has lots of yoga classes happening in the evenings” and asked visitors to be mindful of this.
“We are not part of any mad cult or crazy clubs,” the statement continued.
Yoga instructor Millie Laws told the BBC that she was teaching seven students at Seascape Cafe on Wednesday evening. Laws noticed two people with dogs looking through the cafe’s windows but didn’t think too much about it at first.
“I didn’t know until after we left that these people phoned in saying that there was a mass murderer; they were wearing a robe, and they were walking over all of the people, and it looked like some kind of ritual, and that the people on the floor were actually dead,” Laws said.
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Lincolnshire Police told the BBC that the report was made “with good intentions”.
“A call was made following concerns for the occupants of the North Sea Observatory, at Chapel St Leonards,” the statement said. “Officers attended, we’re happy to report everyone was safe and well.”
“I feel really bad for whoever the person was, who that would, of course, have been terrifying. So I do feel for them,” Laws told the BBC. “But at the same time, you’ve got to see the lighter side of it,” she added.
Representatives for Seascape Cafe and the Lincolnshire Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.
