Police say an Ohio man and woman staged a murder scene so realistic that they fooled people into believing the woman was dead, and that the man killed her. They now face a misdemeanor charge each of inducing panic.

The Sandusky Register reports that shortly after 9 p.m. on on Thursday night, police were dispatched to a home on East Madison Street in Meigs County, after a frantic caller called 911 and said that her friend had been killed and that there several children in the house.

When officers arrived, they determined that it was all a sick joke concocted up by the home’s occupants, Nataleigh Schlette and Micah Risner. According to Sandusky police Sgt. Dawn Allen, Rinser started texting pictures of Schlette after she got into a bathtub and poured ketchup all over herself.

“She got into the bathtub, and they put ketchup all over to make it look like he murdered her. He started sending the picture and texting that he did it.”

According to Sandusky Police Chief John Orzech, the couple apparently came up with the vicious prank as a way to get Risner’s sister to come over to their house. They claimed that the sister owed them money and had been avoiding them.

It’s unclear how many people Risner sent out the photos to, but one of the photos reached Risner’s mother who went into a panic and made the 911 call. Risner sent a specific text message to his sister, trying to pull off the joke.

“Please help me! I really didn’t mean to. I don’t remember. We was arguing and I woke up to this.”

“What the f**** is she dead Michah? Answer me now!”

“I woke up on the bathroom floor with blood on me. And her like that. I’m trying to clean. But I don’t know if I shoumd (sic),” Risner wrote back.

After bonding out of jail, Risner took to Facebook to write a long explanation regarding his actions. He indicated that the pictures weren’t meant to be spread out, especially to his own mother.

“It was an honest prank that was taken too far by the people that seen it.” “They jumped the gun and now everyone is acting like we wasted the cops time. My mother induced the panic when she immediately called police and didn’t call me or anything. She never asked her son, the source. I was expecting everyone to laugh it off. It was also sent to our roommate who lives with us everyday and she knew it was a prank. She was like “good one, but it’s ketchup.”

[Feature Photo: Sandusky Police Department]