A man was arrested after an hours-long SWAT standoff in Deerfield Township, capping off an incident that caught the eye of Greater Cincinnati when a vague shelter-in-place alert was mistakenly sent to residents in nearby counties.
Denzel Poncey, 32, was arrested on outstanding warrants for strangulation and assault after a standoff with deputies in the Landen area of Deerfield Township, deputies at the scene told Enquirer media partner Fox 19.
Poncey barricaded himself inside a home and refused to comply with officers, a dispatcher told The Enquirer.
Deputies eventually breached the door of the house with explosives and got in without firing any shots around 1:30 p.m., Warren County Sheriff Barry Riley told Fox 19.
Poncey and three other people with him were taken out of the house, he said. No deputies were hurt during the standoff.
Much of Greater Cincinnati learned about the standoff after an emergency alert intended for residents in the nearby community “inadvertently went out to unintended areas,” the sheriff’s office said.
County officials say ‘technical malfunction’ caused false alarm
Sheriff Riley told Fox 19 the alert, which he said was sent to all of Warren County and some residents say they received in nearby counties, was only intended to go out to a quarter-mile radius around the incident.
“It is believed that the IPAWS alerting system had a technical malfunction and the alert went to a much wider area and did not relay the entire message,” officials with Warren County Emergency Management said in a news release.
Residents across Greater Cincinnati went to social media looking for more information, including people who said they received the alert outside Warren County in nearby Butler, Montgomery and Hamilton counties.
Officials in towns across the region confirmed they received the alert and clarified it was not intended for their area, such as in Montgomery County, Centerville and Middletown.
The “technical issue” is being investigated with local, state and federal partners, according to the Warren County Emergency Management news release.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Man arrested after Deerfield Township SWAT standoff that was alerted to Greater Cincinnati
Reporting by David Ferrara, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
