Late Thursday night, Washington County authorities pursued a suspect in a vehicle chase, which ended when the car crashed, however the suspect then fled on foot. After authorities, with the aid of K-9 units, were unable to locate the suspect a WENS, or Washington County Wireless Emergency Notification System, alert was issued. Cara Sorrells, director of the 911 communications center explains the text message alert was supposed to go to phones within two miles of the incident, however it exceeded that area.

She apologizes to those who received it outside of the radius. Sorrells adds they are working with the application company to avoid a similar problem in the future.

Also, Sorrells states it is difficult to fit all of the information into a single text message with 160 characters.