The Lawrence County Sheriff's Office received this statement from CrimeRadar, the app that unfortunately caused a small panic at the Mt. Vernon Elementary School last week.

While the incident was unfortunate, things were in place to handle the situation quickly and to make sure it was not valid.  The Mt. Vernon School District and Superintendent Mrs. West did an outstanding job in making sure plans were in place and acted on those plans had it been a real incident.

Again while this was an unfortunately mistake, kudos to CrimeRadar for being good enough to admit their mistake and for taking actions to prevent further incidents like this from happening.

Statement from CrimeRadar:

Message: On the morning of April 10th, an alert posted by CrimeRadar app incorrectly reported a shooting at Mount Vernon Elementary. We are very sorry for the distress this caused to families, teachers, students, law enforcement and the wider community. Our investigation found that our automated system had misunderstood the emergency dispatch audio - incorrectly transcribing "show me out at" as "shooting at". As soon as users flagged the inaccurate alert, our system corrected it and prevented further distribution. This is a serious mistake and we have taken steps to stop it from happening again. We have updated our audio processing and contextual recognition protocols and, more importantly, strengthened our verification process for any incident involving schools and firearms. We are grateful to community members who questioned the alert, listened to the original audio and checked with official sources. We welcome continued scrutiny of our accuracy as we continue to improve our app. KY3 posted a new story.

Sheriff DeLay