by Mashable Video
http://mashable.com
Is this the biggest auto correct fail ever?
Middle schools and high schools in Gainesville, Ga. were locked down Wednesday when a student’s text message — “gunman be at west hall today” — was accidentally sent to a community member’s phone.
The message was supposed to say “gunna”, but the phone’s auto correct feature changed the slang term to something a bit more inflammatory: gunman.
The text message being sent to a wrong number only added to the confusion, according to the Gainesville Times. The recipient reported the text to police, who told the schools to lock down while they tracked down the sender.
Once the police did reach the anonymous recipient, they discovered it was an auto correct mistake.
“It was a combination of odd circumstances,” Sgt. Stephen Wilbanks of the Hall County Sheriff’s Office told The Times. “We want to emphasize that the recipient did the right thing in reporting the message.”
Gainesville officials were likely especially sensitive to the potential threat, since this text message mix-up came just days after a school shooting in Ohio. The suspect in that incident posted a message to Facebook in late December that could have been perceived as a threat. In a long, macabre message, the alleged gunman wrote “Die, all of you.”
Check out the video above to learn more about the Florida school lockdown.
UPDATE: An earlier version of this story placed the school-closing incident in Gainesville, Florida. The correct location was Gainesville, Georgia. We’ve changed the text to correct the article, and regret the error.