DUMFRIES House have apologised for causing ‘distress’ to visitors after first aid dummies where mistaken for dead bodies.

The lifeless dolls were found fully dressed in human clothes just yards away from where tragic Harry Boyd was pulled from a river in Cumnock 10 days previously.

Now the 48-year-old daughter has blasted the insensitive training sessions admitting she would have gotten a fright if she had spotted the dummy.

Other concerned walkers who saw the dolls instantly panicked thinking they had stumbled across something much more sinister before realising it was much a mannequin.

One witness who doesn’t want to be named said: “It is so insensitive and shocking, with everything going on in the community right now you think they would have been a bit more thoughtful.

“Anyone spotting one would have thought they had found a body or someone who was in trouble which is really traumatic.

“The one I found was just yards away from where that poor man was found recently, imagine his family saw that.

We told you previously how heartbroken Caitlin Boyd, 17, said her dad was ‘the nicest man you could meet’ after being left shattered by his death.

Now she is urging Dumfries House to warn the public and use signs when putting holding training sessions like these in the future

Caitlyn said: “It looks weird, the fact it’s laying on the ground like that.

“They should definitely make it more obvious its a training course.

“If I did walk past it, it would probably give me a fright.”

A spokesman for The Prince's Foundation said: "We apologise unreservedly for any distress or alarm caused to visitors to an area of the estate where a first aid training exercise was taking place.

"Mannequins are placed in random locations to provide a "real-life" learning exercise that will enable participants to save lives, but the presence of these mannequins should have been more clearly marked and explained to visitors.

"We are set to undertake a review of how we conduct first aid training in the future."​