UNC Pembroke students got blank alert after shots fired near campus

Administrators at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke are trying to figure out why its student alert system sent out a blank message when shots were fired Wednesday afternoon at a nearby apartment complex.

A former student reportedly died off-campus after the alert came out around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Courtyard Apartments at 519 University Road in Pembroke.

WRAL News spoke with some students who said they didn’t get the alert for nearly 40 minutes after the shooting happened.

A car had its windshield and fender shot up outside of Building 3 at the Courtyard Apartments. When the shots started, students said they scrambled to safety.

Resident Christopher Tamplen said his reaction to the Brave Alert was “tun if you can, hide if you can’t run, fight if you must.

“Me and my roommate just ended up going and sitting in his bathroom with kitchen knives, just in case,” Tamplen said.

Investigators said a former student was shot in the parking lot, but was later found dead at an off-campus location.

Student Rachel Carapella described the Brave Alert she received.

“It was blank,” Carapella said. “One of the emails came out blank.

“No one really knew what was going on, so we were just all confused.”

At a Thursday news conference, UNC-P Chancellor Robin Cummings and the university’s head of security acknowledged there was a problem with the message that was sent out through the school’s Brave Alert system.

“So, there was a delay in the report, and the first message that went out was blank, but subsequently, we issued a message that was notifying the campus of the shooting and to be alert,” Cummings said.

Authorities are investigating the death of the student.

The university’s administration said it is checking to see what went wrong with the alert system.