WARETOWN -- Surrounded by police tape, the bloodied Toyota pinning a body against a tree on a suburban front lawn was bound to draw attention.
That was the point. The Negrottos wanted their Halloween display to look realistic and turn heads.
But they were caught off guard when the cops came knocking on their front door Wednesday. It appears some of their Ocean Township neighbors thought the scene was too realistic and called to complain.
"We mean no harm by it," said Krysten Negrotto, 27. "We don't mean to offend anyone. We do it for the love of Halloween. We just want kids to enjoy like we did as kids."
She said the officers told her they were required by law to respond to the calls. But they noted that they thought the display was pretty creative.
"They encouraged us to add more," she said.
Krysten said her husband Kevin Negrotto, 26, even concocted a back story for the zombie car wreck display, and named the dummy splayed on the hood Zombie Bob.
They wrote a fake news report saying that Bob became zombified in early October from contaminated drinking water caused by a leak at a nearby power plant. The couple used a Toyota Supra car that Kevin uses for drift racing and detached the front bumper.
Most of the responses, Krysten Negrotto said, have been positive. But some expressed their dislike for the display including someone who yelled from a passing car that they were going to "grow up to be horrible individuals.".
Kevin Negrotto said he, too, was surprised by the negative responses, though the couple recently moved to the Mizzen Way neighborhood.
"It's clearly a Halloween display that you've probably seen at a hayride or any other haunted attraction before."
Krysten said someone told her it would have been better to depict something like someone getting stabbed with a knife.
"I was like, 'How is that better?'" she said.
Others have been supportive. The owner of a local swimming pool business even asked the couple if they would replace Zombie Bob's sweatshirt with a shirt advertising his company.
The couple is in the process of adding another zombie to the display named Zombie Cindy, to give their zombified friend a companion.
Spencer Kent may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerMKent. Find the Find NJ.com on Facebook.