EAS - Amber Alert from nowhere near my location

So this morning I got that EAS alert tone screaming at me from my phone.
It was an Amber Alert. This one was for a missing child in Delta, Ohio.

I am in Pittsburgh. Delta, Ohio is about 25 miles west of Toledo near the
Toledo Express Airport. Over 250 miles from my location. Curious then
why this was routed to my phone. I am used to getting them for Steubenville
or the Youngstown area, places relatively close to Pittsburgh. But Delta?

One of my kids lived in Toledo until recently. Could some geotracking be
stuck in this phone indicating that I have been in and out of Toledo a few times
in the past year?

Or is the EAS Amber Alert system just that screwed-up?

gr8oldies said:

Could it be that it was thought that the child might have been taking to southeast Ohio or Pennsylvania?

Click to expand...

I suppose that's possible, but nothing in the message let you know that.

With a State as small as Ohio, my assumption would be the same as gr8. If you're going to kidnap, you probably don't want to be on foot when doing so. The result is, of course, you'll be doing some driving as part of the getaway. Sending an alert to Pittsburgh doesn't sound far fetched, at all.

With that said, I live in Texas. Here in the southeast nook of the State, I sometimes receive an alert for a missing child or elderly person from El Paso, Amarillo, or Texarkana. That would be a heck of a drive down (or over) to Houston, which has made me think to myself the exact same thing that the OP found himself wondering. I guess the agencies figure, as the old saying goes, it is better to err on the side of caution

http://www.toledoblade.com/Police-Fire/2017/03/14/Amber-Alert-issued.html

This appears to be the alert which Freddy received.

The Amber alert system is generally used statewide, even in large states like Ohio and Texas. So you might have received it due to Pittsburgh's general proximity to Ohio. It does not appear that Pennsylvania state patrol ever re-issued the alert for that state. The man and child were found in Indiana.

While that makes sense, if that were the case you would think it would've been broadcast in Detroit as well. It was not. Detroit is barely 60 miles away from Toledo, far closer than Pittsburgh. Perhaps the theory that the abductor was heading towards Pennsylvania is correct, or that an error was made in the broadcast.

Yep, mystery solved.

A VERY frightening incident where a guy who had a 10 month old child with his estranged girlfriend burst into her mother's house, shot the girlfriend (who later died), took the child, kidnapped the mother and took off for parts unknown.

I lived in the area years ago and it is close to the Ohio Turnpike, so they probably put out alerts to anyplace he could drive on that within 4 to 6 hours. Turns out he was headed to Chicago and was captured someplace in Indiana.

What a scumbag. Now his child will have no parents, since the mother is dead and he is headed to prison. Nice going, numbskull!

I think the system needs to be improved. Some statewide alerts are too spread out, IMO. I don't deny that these alerts can be very helpful in finding missing children, but if you are not anywhere near the area where the alert is issued, you tend to ignore it. Just human nature. I would think a billboard system would work better than a EAS alert, and some States do that already.