QUEENS, N.Y. - Reports of a dead baby near a Queens park on Tuesday turned out to be nothing more than a movie prop.

The call to 911 came in at 7:42 a.m. from a woman who said a lifeless infant was lying face down in the grass along a sidewalk outside Crocheron Park in Bayside.

EMS workers arrived and pronounced the baby dead. Afterward, a yellow sheet was placed over the body and police tape was stretched across the block.

"It’s very scary it can happen anywhere when I found out my heart dropped," said one resident.

"It’s terrible to find out something like that. There’s a school right here," noted another resident.

Dozens of police and detectives descended on the block along 215th Street and 35th Avenue. The crime scene unit pitched a tent and officers went door-to-door asking questions.

"All they said like if you knew anything or if you knew anybody had a baby," said one neighbor.

Three hours passed before another stunning discovery — police realized it was all a hoax.

The baby was not real, but a prop, the kind used for theatrical productions - discolored to make it appear dead and decomposing.

Some neighbors were relieved. But others wondered why it took so long to figure it all out.

"Just talking to parents they are all relieved that it was not real because that would be bad for the neighborhood," said one resident.

"I honestly don’t have words for it. It was appalling before its almost just as appalling now," said another resident.

A spokesperson for the FDNY, which oversees the EMS, would not say what, if any, examination was performed on the baby and how trained professionals could have been fooled for so long.

The spokesman did say, "EMS will conduct a medical review of the incident."

Also to be determined was whether the prop was left as a prank or an accident.

One potential giveaway that it was a hoax: The baby had a t-shirt that read, "The crawling dead."

However, because it was facedown on its stomach and not disturbed, no one saw the message for hours.