Amber Alert Issued At 4 AM Jolts New Yorkers Awake
An Amber Alert shocked many New Yorkers out of their sleep at 3:51 Wednesday morning as a report of a missing child buzzed and rang in on cell phones.
The Amber Alert was issued overnight after Marina Lopez abducted her son, Mario Danner Jr., from a social service facility at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and 125th Street in Harlem. Lopez was with her 7-month-old biological son during a supervised visit when she made off with the boy.
Authorities said they were worried for Mario’s safety — Lopez is diagnosed as bipolar and has had recent outbreaks of violence.
In the end the Amber Alert had a happen ending, as Mario was found unharmed on Wednesday afternoon. Marina Lopez, a 25-year-old Queens woman, was also apprehended.
But on Wednesday many New Yorkers were talking about the rude awakening they got in the predawn hours. A spokesman for the New York Police Department said the Amber Alert was requested because officers believed Mario was in imminent danger, noting that it was actually the state police who approved and sent out the text.
Still, angry New Yorkers took to social media on Wednesday to complain about the panic and confusion that came from the early morning call.
“Is such a disruptive alarm necessary in the middle of the night?” one woman wrote Twitter.
Others assumed the call was some kind of personal or city-wide emergency.
That amber alert scared the piss outta me last night. I thought a nuclear bomb was coming.
— mega (@coriega) July 17, 2013
I thought the world was coming to an end at 4am when we got the iphone #AmberAlert alert in nyc. I thought #meteor #earthquake #tsunami
— Jeanette Millan (@JeanetteMillan) July 17, 2013
Normally such messages are reserved for high-level emergencies, like evacuation orders, but the federal government recently added the Amber Alert to the Emergency Alert System.
