Life-like doll resembling a Black child seen hanging from a tree in N.J.

A life-like doll that witnesses say resembled a Black child with a noose around its neck was discovered hanging from a Gloucester County tree Sunday night.

By Monday morning, Elk Township police were looking into the matter, after the image of the three- to three-and-a-half foot figure clad in a white gown was shared widely, including on Facebook and Nextdoor.com, a hyper-local social networking service for neighborhoods.

It was not clear when the figure had been taken down and who did it. A person who rents the one-story house on the property, across from a wooded area on Buck Road about two miles west of Rowan University in Glassboro, did not answer the door Monday night. A phone number connected to the residence was out of service.

On Monday night, Tom Gilbert, chief of detectives with the Gloucester County prosecutor’s office, said the situation was “being taken very seriously, with an exhaustive investigation underway.” He added, “No final decision about charges” had been made.

Asked whether the police or the person living in the house took down the figure, Gilbert said, “My understanding is it was the resident.” He added that he didn’t know what time the figure was removed.

“I was flabbergasted, shocked, disgusted,” said E.V. Voltura, 38, of nearby Elmer, who said she came across the doll on Sunday while driving along the busy Buck Road . “It was a full-sized doll of maybe a 5-year-old girl of African-American descent with all the features of a human, including long hair and nice eyes. Somebody spent a lot of money on it, like it was from a dress shop.”

Voltura, who is completing a Ph.D. in bird health and conservation at Texas A&M Unviversity, said the doll was hanging from the branch of a 35-foot tree with a rope one-to-two inches in circumference that was fashioned into a noose.

“It was not a mummy or something Halloweenish from Walmart,” she continued in an interview. “It was bizarre, and so blatantly hanging close to the side of the road.”

Hassan Williams, 32, a flight coordinator of private jets in Delaware, said he and his fiancé were driving to dinner near Rowan on Sunday when they spotted the figure. “We turned around to make sure we saw what we think we saw. We couldn’t believe it.”

He said he returned Monday morning to take a photo that he posted on Facebook.

“Being someone of color, I thought it was just horrific,” said Williams, who likened the violent image to a lynching, or a suicide. “It left me angry, and triggered things.

“At first, I was trying to give whoever did it the benefit of the doubt, because it was Halloween. But it just wasn’t like that.”

Williams said he didn’t see anyone at the property on Sunday night, but noticed there was a lighted fire pit in the rear of the premises. He added that two people contacted him on Monday saying they’d tried to get the person at the house to take down the doll, but apparently failed.

The photograph he took and posted on Facebook at 8:15 am had 410 comments and 635 shares by early Monday evening. On both Facebook and Nextdoor, there was heated debate over whether the display was a Halloween decoration that shouldn’t be taken seriously, an exercise of First Amendment rights, or “a hate crime”.

Because of its graphic nature, The Inquirer elected not to publish the photograph.

On Monday night, two police cars sat in front of the worn, white and blue house. A small dog barked from inside the dwelling, setting off a ruckus from a neighbor’s chickens scampering around the adjoining front yard.

A man who’d been in the backyard of the empty house said he was a technician hired at the request of the resident to install cameras outside the structure.

Staff writers Melanie Burney and Ryan Briggs contributed to this article.