(Adds details on threat, evacuation, background and byline)
By Jim Forsyth
Oct 19 (Reuters) – The campus of Texas A&M; University, one
of the biggest in the United States, was evacuated on Friday
after school officials received a bomb threat, the latest such
incident at American universities in recent weeks.
The threat came in an anonymous email delivered shortly
before noon, Texas A&M; spokesman Jason Cook said.
“We are 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 said.
All classes were canceled.
More than 50,000 students are enrolled at Texas A&M;, which
has a sprawling 5,000-acre (2,025-hectare) campus with hundreds
of buildings in College Station, Texas, about 100 miles (160 km)
northwest of Houston.
The threat came a day before Texas A&M;’s scheduled home
football game against Louisiana State University. Cook said
there was no reason to believe the game, or a midnight
campus-wide pep rally would be affected by the scare.
It was the second threat delivered by email to a Texas
college in the past two days. Three buildings at Texas State
University in San Marcos, south of Austin, were evacuated on
Thursday.
Last month, bomb scares and other threats forced the
evacuations of campuses in at least five states – Texas,
Louisiana, Indiana, Ohio and North Dakota.
Police in Louisiana arrested a 42-year-old man in connection
with a threat that led to the evacuation of Louisiana State
University in Baton Rouge on Sept. 17.
Campus police for the University of Texas at Austin, which
was evacuated on Sept. 14 for a phoned-in bomb threat, have said
they believe some of the cases are connected.
In August, a man killed a police officer and another person
in a shooting just a few blocks from Texas A&M.; Police later
killed the gunman, who was being served an eviction notice when
he opened fire, in a firefight that lasted nearly 30 minutes.
(Reporting By Dan Burns in New York and Jim Forsyth in San
Antonio, Texas; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Xavier Briand)
