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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Guardian staff and agency

Texas sorry after mistakenly sending emergency alert for cursed Chucky doll

Chucky, the cursed doll from the slasher movie series Child’s Play.
Chucky, the cursed doll from the slasher movie series Child’s Play. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/Paramount

The Texas public safety department raised a few eyebrows in the Lone Star state by reportedly sending out an emergency alert asking its citizens to keep an eye out for Chucky – the evil possessed doll from the horror movie series Child’s Play – whom it said was a suspect in a kidnapping.

The message went out over the state’s Amber Alert system, which is blasted to people’s mobile phones, usually to help find a missing child. It was sent three times.

It described the suspect as being called Chucky and listed him as a 28-year-old with red, auburn hair, blue eyes who stood at 3ft 1in tall and weighed 16lbs. He was said to be wearing blue denim overalls with a multi-colored striped long sleeve shirt and carrying a large knife – matching his appearance in the films.

His race was listed as “Other: Doll.”

In the movies – which debuted in 1988 – Chucky is a child’s toy possessed by the spirit of a dead serial killer, who murders numerous people.

Faced with numerous media enquiries as to why an alert was being sent hunting for a cartoonish villain from a slasher movies series, the department issued a statement saying: “This alert is a result of a test malfunction. We apologize for the confusion this may have caused and are diligently working to ensure this does not happen again.”

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