Dive Summary:
- At 6:10 p.m. Tuesday evening, an incorrect emergency text and e-mail warning of a shooting incident at Wilson Hall was sent to thousands of Michigan State University students and community members, causing a shooting scare.
- A corrected alert was sent at 6:45 p.m., informing the campus that there was no active shooter on campus, and a post on the campus police department's Facebook page revealed shortly after that the incorrect message was the result of a computer error during the launch of a tornado warning issued for Ingham County around the same time.
- The false alarm not only scared those who received it, but those who didn't, who wondered on Twitter if not receiving the incorrect message at all was a good or bad thing.
Idc if it was a mistake, the fact that I didn't receive the #MSU alert regarding an on-campus shooter is disturbing. What if it was legit?
— Colin Dilworth (@Dilworth269) May 28, 2013
From the article:
... The university sent out the following message at 6:10 p.m. via text and email:
"THIS IS AN EMERGENCY MESSAGE from MSU POLICE, DO NOT HANG UP. There has been a shooting incident at Wilson Hall. Take shelter in a locked room. Monitor www.msu.edu; Public Media." ...