Texas A&M Bomb Threat Leads to 5-Hour Evacuation at University, No Bombs Found

A bomb threat received by Texas A&M University forced campus officials to evacuate the entire campus on Friday, Reuters reported. According to Texas A&M spokesman Jason Cook, the university received the threat in an anonymous email sent just before noon. The threat is just the latest in a series of similar incidents at American universities in the past weeks, Reuters stated.

"We're doing a building-by-building and area-by-area search, with the hope that we will be able to gradually allow people back on campus," Cook told reporters. Reuters reported that all classes at the 50,000 student university had been cancelled.

The campus, which is 5,000-acres with hundreds of buildings, is located in College Station, Texas, some 100 miles northwest of Houston, according to Reuters. The anonymous threat was received a day before a scheduled football game against Louisiana State University but Cook said he did not expect the game or midnight campus-wide pep rally to be affected.

A similar threat was sent by email to Texas State University in San Marcos, near Austin, on Thursday. Reuters reported that three buildings at the university were evacuated. Bomb threats and other threats caused campus evacuations in five states last month, including Texas, Louisiana, Indiana, North Dakota and Ohio.

According to Reuters, a 42-year-old man was arrested in Louisiana who had a connection to the threat sent to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge on September 17. Campus police at the University of Texas at Austin, which was forced to evacuate on September 14 after receiving a threat over the phone, told reporters that they believe some of the cases are connected.

Friday's bomb scare at Texas A&M caused about a five-hour evacuation, the Houston Chronicle reported. According to A&M Police Lt. Allan Baron, no bombs had been found in the campus-wide search and people were being allowed to come back on campus.

Baron told reporters, "We are diligently working on this investigation with our local law enforcement agencies as well as with state and federal [agencies]."