'Severed arm' joke closes motorway

A motorway was brought to a standstill after a fake Halloween arm was seen on a slip road.

Thousands of dirvers were held up for hours yesterday as officers closed the M62 in Merseyside, fearing the limb could be real.

But after an extensive hunt by officers and the Northwest Motorway Group, two council workers called police at 4.30pm to say they had spotted the arm was fake earlier in the day.

Detective Inspector Tom Keaton, from Knowsley CID, said: "We don't how this plastic arm came to be in the middle of the road, whether it was placed there deliberately or whether it had fallen out of the window of a passing vehicle.

"Merseyside Police put a lot of resources into this incident and not only has it caused expense both in terms of time and money, it caused traffic chaos for motorists and was extremely upsetting for the drivers who saw the plastic arm in the road."