OPP say ‘technical issue’ stopped Amber Alert’s delivery provincewide

Ontario Provincial Police say an Amber Alert involving a missing baby girl on Thursday failed to send to devices provincewide due to a “technical issue.”

An Amber Alert was issued Thursday morning for a three-month-old girl believed to have been abducted by her father. She was later found safe and the father was taken into custody.

OPP say the Amber Alert sent shortly before 3:30 a.m. went out to cell phones near Roseneath, Ont., where the girl was last seen, but did not go to cellphones across the province.

The force says they experienced an issue related to an automated third-party software update. They contacted the province’s emergency operation centre who was able to issue the alert to LTE-connected wireless devices in the area.

READ MORE: OPP investigate why Amber Alert not delivered across province

Police say this approach was supported by investigators, who had reason to believe the suspect had not travelled far.

The technical issue has since been resolved and OPP’s Amber Alert system is fully functioning again.

OPP is taking measures to ensure this does not happen again, such as regularly testing the system, creating an alert process that does not rely on a third-party software and creating a backup system.