Erroneous alert about 'active shooter' sent to St. Cloud State campus community

St. Cloud State University says an erroneous alert about an “active shooter” was sent to students, faculty and staff on Monday night.

The active shooter alert was sent out by text message to the campus community at about 10:45 p.m.

But the university said in a statement Tuesday that there was a suspicious person on campus — not an active shooter. An updated alert with corrected information was sent out five minutes later.

A final update was sent out at about 11:20 p.m., after police located the suspicious individual and took them to a hospital without incident. University officials said there was no crime committed.

In its statement Tuesday, St. Cloud State said the issue that led to the messaging error “has been resolved for future emergency situations.” The university did not elaborate on why the inaccurate message was sent.

Inaccurate or overly broad public safety alerts have previously been an issue in Minnesota. Last fall, a shelter-in-place alert intended for a small area of Roseville, Minn. was inadvertently sent to cell phones across the Twin Cities metro area.

And last August, a shelter-in-place alert for an incident in Pine Island, Minn., was sent out to a much wider swath of the state.

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