Austin police sent a shelter-in-place alert Wednesday to 51,789 people in South Austin, warning that a dangerous and violent person with outstanding warrants was at large near the St. Elmo neighborhood. The message went to phones within a one-mile radius of the intersection of Willow Springs Road and Industrial Boulevard.
Chris Bataska got the alert while he was at his office on Barton Springs Road. He said his first reaction was to think it might be a phishing attempt, noting that his company has dealt with a lot of those messages and that the alert looked like a different link than normal. “It just created some skepticism,” he said.
John Stolz had a similar reaction. He said he was “slightly confused and a little caught off guard” when the alert arrived, and later described it as “really spammy.” He said it would have helped if the message had been clearer about who it was coming from and which neighborhoods were affected.
The Austin Police Department confirmed roughly 30 minutes later that the alert was real, describing the suspect as a muscular Black man in his mid-30s wearing a white shirt and a white hat with a red brim. Police told the public to stay inside, lock the doors and call 911 if they saw him. About 10 minutes after the alert was sent, however, APD lifted the shelter-in-place order.
That quick reversal is what left many people unsure what they were supposed to do. APD later said that after an extensive search it was believed the subject had fled the area. The department said it had only minor involvement in the incident while assisting the Texas Department of Public Safety and the FBI.
The unusual alert lands in a city that has grown used to emergency notifications, but not to ones that can look at first like a scam. In this case, the concern was real, the warning was real, and the police order did not last long. The FBI said the suspect is now in custody.
