A Baton Rouge man arrested on suspicion of posting an Instagram bomb threat is suing LSU after a district attorney cleared him of all charges.
On Dec. 14, 2018, Evan James was arrested on a charge of communicating false information of a planned bombing on school property. He was booked into the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison.
Now, James is suing the University for defamation, libel, slander, false arrest, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution after the Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar C. Moore declared him innocent.
A petition for damages was submitted by James’ attorney, Aidan Reynolds, in December. The petition described James as a “well performing student with aspirations to attain a degree in radiology” with no prior criminal history.
James was a victim of an armed robbery on Alvin Dark Avenue on Dec. 14, 2018, as he was walking back to his home around 1:45 a.m., according to the petition. The perpetrator held James at gunpoint and demanded his property, which was $8 and his cell phone, the lawsuit alleges. The gunman then demanded the passcode to James’ phone before fleeing.
James tried to flag cars down and then ran to a construction site, where a supervisor called the police for him, the petition said. A Baton Rouge Police Department officer responded and filed a police report.
The next morning, multiple armed LSUPD officers went to James’ house with a warrant for his arrest after an Instagram post from James’ account threatened to bomb the University’s campus.
The gunman used James’ phone after the robbery to post the threats, according to the petition. Reynolds said the plaintiff could not have made the threats at the time they were posted because James had no access to his social media accounts.
“Im gone to bomb LSU tmr I don’t love life any more they just bad ppl they just bad ppl,” the threat in the post read. “3:10am it’s going on.”
Reynolds said that he has known James for more than eight years and knows that James does not write emails or texts that way.
“It was clearly not him,” Reynolds said via text.
The petition said LSUPD did not investigate the validity of the posts but instead had an arrest warrant signed based on screenshots of the posts used as the only evidence.
The Reveille contacted LSU Media Relations Director Ernie Ballard for a statement on behalf of the University and LSUPD. Ballard said LSU does not comment on pending litigation.
Following James’ arrest, an investigation was conducted by the East Baton Rouge District Attorney’s Office, which cleared James of all charges.
Moore wrote a letter in November formally declining James’ prosecution and deeming him factually innocent. A copy of Moore’s letter was filed with the lawsuit.
“It is clear from the evidence that Evan James did not make the unlawful communication and he could not have initiated the communication through others,” Moore said in the letter.
James was admitted to the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University to study radiology but was dismissed in July 2019 due to LSU’s negligence, according to the lawsuit. He was taking classes at Baton Rouge Community College to prepare for the radiology program prior to the incident, according to Reynolds.
Reynolds blames LSU for James’ dismissal from the radiology program.
“Of course, LSU with all its malice called BRCC and caused him to be thrown out of the school,” Reynolds said via text. “Thereafter, again LSU in association with Our Lady of the [L]ake — because that is a joint venture — demanded he resign from the radiology program.”
The 2018 threat hasn’t been the only recent false bomb threat to rock the University’s flagship campus.
On Oct. 12, a University of Alabama student called in a bomb threat to Tiger Stadium during the highly anticipated LSU-Florida football game.
According to East Baton Rouge Parish booking records, a call came to the Baton Rouge
Police Department’s non-emergency line during the game that said “there is a bomb in the stadium.” Detectives traced the call to the phone of Connor Bruce Croll, 19, and discovered he was a student at the University of Alabama.
ESPN announced there were over 102,000 fans in attendance that night and 6.45 million viewers on television, making it the most watched college football game on the network in two years.
Connor Bruce Croll, 19, was charged on Oct. 18 for communicating false information of a planned bombing on school property, a felony offense, by the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney’s Office. He now faces up to 20 years in prison.
In a statement about the incident, Ballard said LSUPD and University officials, as well as federal and local law enforcement on location, have protocol in place to respond to perceived threats at Tiger Stadium and across campus.
“In this case, protocol was followed efficiently and effectively to quickly ascertain the source of the threat,” Ballard said via email. “That protocol includes an immediate sweep of the stadium and a multi-agency investigation, which led to the suspect being identified within minutes and arrested soon thereafter.”
Ballard said there is nothing more important than safety and well-being on campus.
In 2012, an anonymous bomb threat called to campus around 10:30 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 17 caused University-wide evacuation and panic. At 11:30 a.m. that day, phones and computers across campus lit up, notifying everyone on campus of the reported bomb threat and issued a mandatory evacuation.
Students immediately began pouring out of classes, but many were stuck in a campus-wide traffic gridlock. Traffic was backed up across campus due to the evacuation, and many Tiger Trails buses were stuck in traffic for hours. Students living on campus also felt stuck, as they weren’t allowed to return to their rooms and apartment until seven hours after the ordered evacuation.
Bomb squads began searching campus buildings around midday, but an explosive was never found. The campus was deemed safe around 11 p.m., about 12 hours after the initial emergency text ordering the evacuation was sent out.
William Bouvay Jr. plead ed guilty to calling in the threat and was later sentenced to 24 years in prison.
The 2012 bomb threat occurred four days after bomb threat hoaxes at the University of Texas at Austin and North Dakota State University.
This post, which includes a threat to bomb LSU's campus, was made on Dec. 14 from Evan James' personal social media account.
