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Police sent a helicopter, an armed response unit and dog handlers to a late-night report of a man brandishing a weapon – to find a gardener using a rake.

Wayne Dodd had been helping friend Stephen Hogan with some landscaping when they noticed the helicopter circling.

Stephen said: “All of a sudden there was a lot of commotion. My wife Alison looked outside and saw about five police cars, armed officers and dogs.

“They came to the door saying someone had a weapon.”

(Image: BNPS)

Plumber Stephen, 55, said the officers asked to check the back garden as their “eyes in the sky” had confirmed activity there.

He said: “They came in and found Wayne with the rake. He’d been helping flatten some ground – we weren’t making much noise.”

Police in Christchurch, Dorset, confirmed they were answering a 999 call from a nearby nursing home reporting a man holding what seemed to be a weapon.

Officers had been sent to the bungalow just before midnight after the chopper team confirmed someone was in the garden.

(Image: BNPS)

Wayne, 43, said: “I was rolling an old part of the garden and saw the helicopter.

"By the time the police came I was raking over the ground and then they just left.”

Stephen added: “It’s reassuring they checked it out, but in the end they did all that just to see what was going on in our garden.”

Last week police in Aldershot, Hants, sent armed officers and a helicopter to intercept a man reported to be armed with a shotgun on a bridge - he was actually carrying two didgeridoos.