A former college basketball player was arrested Monday at a Utah elementary school after a bomb scare.
A masked man entered the Eagle Valley Elementary School in Eagle Mountain and ordered children to be evacuated and said he had explosives in his car, an Alpine School District spokesman told ABC4 Utah.
While police would not identify the suspect, hours earlier, a man claiming to be former University of Texas at El Paso basketball player Chris Craig sent a note to media threatening the school, according to the El Paso Times.
The paper said Craig’s email also stated he “will call 911 with a threat of an explosive and drive onto my 9yr olds elementary school, Eagle Valley Elementary, with a True Explosive.”
The email to the Times also said he “was born into this world under the slave name of Christopher Craig. Currently, I am known as The Radical Islamic Jihadist Muhammad Allah Al-Khidr.”
A neighbour posted video of the arrest on Facebook.
In 2014, Sports Illustrated wrote a profile on Craig, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
In the article, it was noted Craig had been detained in Israel and shipped back to the U.S. after posting comments on Twitter about Barack Obama and assassination in 2013.
The man in custody was described as being a caucasion male in his mid-30s by Utah Valley Sheriff’s spokesperson Spencer Cannon shortly after the arrest was made.
“It’s not a rational act by any means whether he has mental health issues or he just hates people,” he said in describing the incident.
Cannon said the bomb squad was still searching the man’s car and the school grounds for explosives.
Cannon could not confirm whether the suspect has a child that attended the school.