The automated telephone call shook Karla Edwards so badly she could not compose herself. On the other end of the phone, a message was telling her the man who was in prison for her sister’s slaying had been released.

“I can’t even tell you how bad it was, I couldn’t even talk,” Edwards said.

Sobbing, she called the sheriff’s deputy who investigated her sister’s 1998 killing. He started making calls of his own, and hours later, there was another startling discovery: It was not true.

Thousands of Ohio crime victims or their family members received calls from a computer notification system Friday mistakenly telling them inmates had been released, a state prisons spokesman said.

About 3,000 calls were made starting at noon, he said. The system was shut down when the glitch was discovered about an hour later when concerned crime victims started calling the agency.

Garbage In = Garbage Out. Always.