(September 26, 2008) —

For about three hours today, dozens of Rochester police officers swarmed the area around South Goodman Street for a man who police believe shot an eight-year-old boy on Parsells Avenue last night. Police say the suspect has friends in the neighborhood and may be hiding there.

The 911 Center notified people in the neighborhood by what's called a hyper-alert.

The 911 Center alerted people in live in the neighborhood where the manhunt took place via a taped alert that said, .This is the Monroe County 911 Center calling on behalf of the Rochester Police Department. They're in the area of the South Goodman, Rutgers, Monroe and East Avenue area looking for a suspect..

The brief 30-second message went on to describe the suspect in detail and asked anyone who may have seen him to call 911 but it did not say why he was being pursued.

Renee Eichel said he got the taped alert. .I didn't think much of anything. I thought they would probably catch somebody eventually.. Eichel said that he didn.t fear for his safety.

As many as 40 police officers swooped down on the neighborhood where homes and apartment houses are close together. Police dogs and horses were also brought in. But for the most part, traffic was allowed to move freely except for two streets - Harvard Street and nearby Harlem.

At the Museum and Science Center, about 200 children on a field trip from School No. 9 were not allowed to leave the building and museum staff turned away their buses. It was a lockdown.

Deb Jacobson said, .To my knowledge it has not happened here before certainly since I've been here in eight years. I'd say it's unusual and of course we're complying with everything in the way the police are asking us to, for everyone's protection..

After a time, the kids eventually were allowed to get on their buses, under the watchful eye of city police and museum security.

Second-grade teacher Shannon Gardner said, .I didn't tell the children anything. I didn't want them to be frightened, so we just knew that our bus was going to be delayed a half-hour to 40 minutes. And that's all that we knew. They (kids) were fine. There is tons of stuff to do in there. This is a great place to be. So they were unaware and nobody was frightened. Everybody was safe..

One interesting thing we found today is that there are an awful lot of people in the Park Avenue area who only have cell phones. So they didn't get the 911 message. If you would like to register your cell phone number to receive these alerts, click here.