An alert sent to cell phones about the search for an armed and dangerous man had many Tennesseans wondering and worrying.
The statewide emergency alert, sent twice on Wednesday, read "STEVEN WIGGINS*ARMED AND DANGEROUS W/ M BROWN HAIR/EYES**6'1,220,866-ALERTTBI."
The message was referring to the search for a suspect in the shooting death of a sheriff's deputy in Dickson County, Tennessee, just west of Nashville. But you wouldn't know that from the alert, which contained no location information.
A number of 10News viewers reached out to us with their questions and concerns.
Many said they were frightened that an 'armed an dangerous' man was lurking in East Tennessee because of the lack of immediate location or context in the alert. Similarly, Western and Central Tennesseans outside the immediate search area also voiced similar concerns on social media, saying it lacked details and they wished a location had been included.
Leslie Earhart with the TBI said this is only the second time the TBI has sent out the statewide Blue Alert in the history of the program, which is sent via the same system as an AMBER Alert and notifies people across the state on their phones in cases in which a law enforcement officer has been killed or seriously injured by a suspect authorities are searching for.
In January 2018 following the shooting of a Knoxville Police officer, KPD said at the time it considered requesting a Blue Alert in the search for the suspect that was later apprehended.
"The program uses the statewide infrastructure of the existing AMBER Alert system to push out critical information to citizens to assist in locating a missing child who is in imminent danger," according to the TBI's Blue Alert info page. "Blue Alerts are issued by the staff in TBI’s Criminal Intelligence Unit, who after determining a warranted Blue Alert, will activate the alert on TBI’s website, E-mail law enforcement and media the details of the incident."
The TBI did not comment on the lack of location within the actual phone alert itself, though.
Before the phone alert, the TBI had posted details on the Blue Alert about where and why Wiggins was named a person-of-interest to its social media accounts and website, which WBIR 10News sent an alert on its app and social media reporting that information roughly 10 minutes before the statewide alert appeared on phones in East Tennessee.
The TBI's website contains more details about each alert it sends, and like AMBER alerts the TBI also posts messages to the electronic message signs across Tennessee's interstate system.
As of 1:00 p.m., those signs along Knoxville's interstates said "POLICE BLUE ALERT. FOR INFO CALL 1-855-ALERT-TBI" according to the Tennessee Department of Transportation's Smartway website.
The TBI posted to Twitter after the alert that they'd also been made aware the Memphis area office of the National Weather Service issued a Child Abduction Alert in error while attempting to assist with the active Blue Alert, saying there is no active AMBER Alert in Tennessee at this time.