Oregon's crime victim notification system faced a major technical glitch, which led to many false notices on Friday evening. The false notices were about the release of inmates and one of them was of a notorious killer.

At 5.30 pm on Friday, the notifications started coming from the Oregon VINE Service (Victim Information Notification Everyday).

Corrections spokeswoman Betty Bernt said that inmate Ward Weaver III was the subject of wrong alert. He was held in the case of aggravated murder in 2004, but he remains locked up. The spokeswoman affirmed that there were around 8,000 erroneous notifications that inmates were being released.

Upon receiving the messages, she was completely horrified. She said that they thought it was for real. The Corrections Department said, "Routine system maintenance appears to have triggered numerous notifications to victims in error".

The problem happened in Oregon's Victim Information and Notification Everyday (VINE) system. Officials affirmed that service contractor Appriss was working on its repair and has also, planned to alert everyone who received wrong information.

On talking about whether such a problem has taken place in the past, Bernt affirmed that it is for the time and has not in the past. She expects that the contractor has fixed the problem Friday night.

The department suggested that crime victims and members of the public can know about the current status of inmates in state custody with the help of the Oregon Offender Search option on the Internet.

In 2001, Oregon launched the VINE service across the state. Oregon became the 11th state to adopt it, affirmed the Corrections Department. The Corrections Department and Appriss have apologized for the erroneous messages to VINE subscribers.