(CNN) A man and his girlfriend sued the state of Hawaii, saying the false missile alert debacle earlier this year caused him to have a heart attack.

James Sean Shields and Brenda Reichel filed the suit Tuesday. In addition to the state, Vern Miyagi, former head of Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, is named as a defendant.

Shields and Reichel say they were driving to the beach on January 13 when they received alerts on their cell phones that a missile was headed toward Hawaii and that they needed to find shelter.

"Both plaintiffs believed this message to be true and were extremely frightened and thought they were shortly going to die," the lawsuit reads. "They decided that there was not much they could do to protect themselves from this threat and decided that if they were going to die, they might as well die together on the beach."

Reichel then got a call from her son, who serves in the Hawaii Army National Guard. He told her the threat was real, heightening their fears even more.

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