from BBC NEWS:

A US woman who killed herself was left hanging in public for more than 12 hours because people who saw the body mistook it for a Halloween decoration.

The woman, 42, hanged herself from a tree on a fairly busy road in the US state of Delaware, state police said.

It was not until hours after neighbours first saw the body hanging at breakfast time that the police were called.

“It looked like something somebody would have rigged up,” local resident Fay Glanden told a local newspaper.

“They thought it was a Halloween decoration,” Mrs Glanden told the News Journal newspaper of Wilmington, Delaware.

The body, in the town of Frederica, was clearly visible to passing cars, the report says.

Officials have not released any information about the woman.

Police spokesman Cpl Jeff Oldham said they were treating the death as a suicide.