University Police was on high alert May 18 after an anonymous caller dialed 911, stating that a bomb would go off at Nicholls State University during its largest spring commencement ceremony to date.
The call came in at 8:54 a.m., and the caller said that a bomb would go off on campus in five hours, the time of the university’s largest graduation ceremony for the College of Business Administration, the College of Nursing and Allied Health and University College.
911 passed the phone call to The City of Thibodaux, who then sent it to University Police, where Director Craig Jaccuzzo launched an investigation.
The first thing University Police did was secure Stopher Gymnasium, the location of graduation, even though it had already been swept the night before and an armed officer spent the night in the building.
“Before we have any major event, we always prepare and prep the buildings, or the security of these buildings before,” Jaccuzzo said. “We knew that facility had been searched and checked.”
As a police department, University Police has protocols to follow in the event of a bomb threat, such as notifying regional agencies like the state police department, Acadian Ambulance, and Lafourche and Terrebonne Parishes Sheriffs’ Offices, all while also investigating the viability and credibility of the threat.
“From there, we are working a two-phase operation,” Jaccuzzo said. “We are looking at the perimeter of the University, and we are looking at the investigation criminally of who is doing this.”
Officers continued to search areas near the gym with the help of bomb dogs provided by St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office and Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office, but no explosives were found.
“We searched the perimeter of the gymnasium, the buildings around it and the quad,” Jaccuzzo said. “We had officers looking in the parking lot for packages like school bags or anything out of the ordinary.”
As the search of the area continued, more information on the caller came in to the office.
“We were able to get a ping, which is a cell tower giving us GPS coordinates to the location of where the phone call was made,” Jaccuzzo said. “That location came up in Martin Luther King Street in Thobodaux, and it came up within the vicinity of the apartments there.”
At that time, officials were able to go to the apartments and contact individuals that were in the vicinity of the phone.
“We also brought in people who were ironically leaving at the same time that the police showed up,” Jaccuzzo said. “So we brought them in and started questioning them.”
While there is one suspect that University Police is looking to charge criminally, no formal changes have been made.
The office also received a recording of the 911 call that they slowed down and broke apart to get insight on the caller’s motivation for the threat.
“We were able to break out the guy having a conversation with somebody else after he made the threat like, ‘I’m gonna get that bitch,'” Jaccuzzo said. “So he made the threat to cause some disruption.”
With all of the evidence gathered and no explosives found near the location, the administration decided to have the first graduation ceremony, scheduled for 10:00 a.m., go on as planned since the threat was made for the 2:00 p.m. ceremony.
Based on information gathered from interviewing people and suspects as well as another search and sweep of the location by officers and bomb dogs, University Police found that the building was safe for the 2:00 p.m. ceremony, with added security.
The tightened security did not allow anyone with a package to enter the building. Any items that had to be brought into the gym for medical reasons were scanned by officers and sniffed by dogs before entering. Officials also used a metal-detector wand to search for any objects that could be used for weapons.
Despite some people being a bit upset with having to bring their bags back to their cars, Jaccuzzo said that most people were cooperative, and both graduation ceremonies went on as planned.
“Our leads and our investigation led us that there would not be any threat to the event or the campus, so we moved on with it,” Jaccuzzo said. “It was just an unfortunate incident, but people still got to graduate, people still got to experience the completion of their careers, and we were able to not give somebody the credit of trying to disrupt a major event.”