MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (WTVF) — A system malfunction has some people sitting in jail longer than they expected.
Rutherford County officials say a major network failure has caused an outage — putting emails and the jail records systems offline.
Spring Voss was arrested last night. She claims it was a false allegation and thought she would be released 12 hours later but was held until noon today.
The sheriff's office says this is not a ransomware attack. The system failure happened late Tuesday, and when jail officials needed to confirm inmate releases, the courts were closed.
"We felt like we were hostages in another country that's how we felt," said Voss.
In a tweet, the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office said in part, "IT is restoring a major network failure. This outage affects email and the jail and records systems. The system should be fixed today. Thanks for understanding the service delays while the network is repaired."
"It was like it was maybe 18, 19 hours I'd been there by that time. And I started to get upset, and well, I had seizures. And I had one right there in the pod with other ladies," Voss said.
Voss says her biggest fear was her health.
"I feared I was going to die from a seizure before I would get out of there."
She was eventually released after her records were confirmed when jail officials called the court to verify her release.
"I do appreciate y’all taking an interest in this because I don't believe I would be out now if it hadn't been for y’all interest in it."
Inmates are being released but the process is taking longer because the staff has to wait until the courts open to verify the release dates for inmates.
The county has apologized for the inconvenience and a spokesperson says the delay was "out of their hands." It's still being worked on right now.
They expect the issue to be resolved today.
