Ramsey county residents received an emergency alert to shelter in place at approximately 10:52 a.m. Oct. 25 due to a homicide suspect at large.

This alert rang out in classes across Hamline University causing some professors to stop instructing and move into secure positions with doors locked and lights out. 

The first notification went to a larger audience than intended. 

“It’s an alert system that’s designed for geographical areas. When it was sent out, it’s sent out through the Ramsey County Emergency Communications Center and they control the alerts itself, so Roseville police made a request for the alert to go out,” Sergeant David McCabe of the SPD said. “As far as St. Paul’s concerned, it accidentally went to a larger geographical area than it was supposed to have which created a lot of confusion. Obviously the efforts to correct that confusion were underway almost immediately once it went out, which unfortunately took a few minutes to get out.” 

A series of two other alerts followed the first. Ramsey County was also active on social media with updates.  

“If you received an emergency alert notice on your phone today, the incident occurred in Roseville near Har Mar Mall & notice inadvertently went out wider than intended. More information forthcoming from City of Roseville,” St. Paul major Melvin Carter said in a tweet. 

The second alert listed the specific part of Roseville where authorities were focused. These were near Roseville’s Har Mar Mall. The shelter-in-place advisory was clarified for Larpenteur Avenue to Highway 36 and Victoria Street to Snelling Avenue. 

A third alert sent around 11:30 a.m. lifted shelter-in-place advisory and notified the public that a suspect was in custody. This suspect was picked up at Snelling and Como avenues, a little over a mile away from the Hamline campus.