Shoppers were gathering their groceries and waiting in checkout lines when an emergency alert appeared to announce an active shooter situation was happening at the very store they were patronizing.
The message from the Madison Police Department appeared on cellphones across the city and beyond.
“MADISON P.D.: INVOLVED IN AN ACTIVE SHOOTING INVESTIGATION AT KROGER ON WALL TRIANA. AVOID THE AREA. NO FURTHER INFORMATION AT THIS TIME,” the message said.
But, it turns out, there wasn’t an active shooter situation at the Kroger in the Midtown Marketplace shopping center on Wall Triana Highway. Rather, a man had been fatally shot over an hour earlier in an area outside, near the back of the store, in what police are calling an “isolated incident.”
“We were trying to say the investigation was active,” said Madison police Capt. John Stringer, who acknowledged the message may have been unclear.
In the wake of mass shootings, which have claimed hundreds of lives across the country in recent years, the term ‘active shooting’ has come to stoke one of peoples’ worst fears.
The initial Madison police alert was distributed around 5:26 p.m. In a follow up message about 30 minutes later, the police department dropped the word “active,” saying it was investigating a shooting at Kroger.
Stringer said the department is already working to make sure its messages are more clear in the future.
“We are going to put a template together so there’s a standard Nixle message for situations like this,” he said.
Nixle is a service that allows law enforcement, cities, schools and business to send out emergency notices or other notifications to the community through text and email. More than 8,000 agencies, including police departments across the country, use the service to announce severe weather threats, traffic delays, crimes and other significant events in their jurisdictions. Nixle is owned by Everbridge, a Massachusetts-based communications services company.
Stringer said dispatchers are responsible for sending out Nixle notifications during emergencies that happen outside normal business hours. He said once a template has been created, the department will meet with dispatchers to answer any questions about the new protocol.
Police seek tips
Police are still investigating the shooting, which happened around 4 p.m. outside the grocery store. The name of the slain person hasn’t yet been released. Investigators are looking for a male person of interest, whose identity remained unknown to police on Monday.
A Kroger spokesperson told AL.com the shooting didn’t appear to involve any customers or employees. The company is cooperating to assist police with the investigation.
“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family of the deceased,” said the spokesperson Melissa Eads in an email to AL.com.
Stringer said police believe the shooter and slain person knew each other. As of Monday morning, Stringer said, police hadn’t found surveillance video of the incident.
“We are working very hard on this investigation,” Stringer said. “We are going to continue until we identify, catch and prosecute the perpetrator to the fullest extent of the law. We will not tolerate this type of activity in the city of Madison.”
Anyone with information that could help the investigation is asked to call police at 256-772-5689.
“If anybody believes they might have information or seen anything — no matter how small — we want to hear from them,” Stringer said. “You’re not bothering us; you’re not going to hinder the investigation.”
The Kroger store, the anchor of the Midtown Market shopping center in Madison, opened in 2016 to replace a store on Hughes Road. Madison is a booming suburb of Huntsville, Alabama’s third largest city.
The deadly shooting is the third homicide in Madison so far in 2019. It’s is one of at least 28 homicides throughout Madison County and its cities so far this year. Police have said at least three of those killings were justified.