Blog Briefing Room

Police initially sent to wrong Waffle House in Nashville shooting

Police dispatchers initially sent officers to the wrong Waffle House after receiving a 911 call about a shooting at a Waffle House in Tennessee that left four dead, WKRN-TV News 2 reported.

Dispatchers first sent police to a Waffle House that is 8.7 miles away from the one where the shooter was, according to a timeline provided to the Nashville television network.

The dispatch corrected the address for the officers one minute and 25 seconds after the dispatch went out. Twenty seconds later an officer cleared the scene at the Waffle House without the shooter.

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Two minutes after the initial dispatch went out, a new call was made to a police precinct closer to the Waffle House with the shooter.

The error stemmed from a 911 cell phone call in which the person said they were at a Waffle House with a shooter on Murfreesboro Pike but didn’t know the exact address, Michelle Peterson, a representative for the Nashville Emergency Communications Center, told WKRN.

The dispatchers acted quickly and sent officers to the Waffle House they were familiar with, according to Peterson.

The Waffle House shooter fled the restaurant after being confronted by a customer and was arrested after evading police for almost 34 hours.

The man who confronted the shooter, James Shaw Jr., has been hailed as a hero and started a GoFundMe account raising more than $180,000.