Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Former college coach Chris Craig sentenced to 60 days in jail for school bomb threat

chris.craig.mug.shot

Chris Craig, a former Division I assistant coach that played collegiately at UTEP, has been sentenced to 60 days in jail stemming from an incident in September of 2016 when he threatened to blow up an elementary school.

In the incident, Craig, who had been referring to himself as “the Radical Islamic Jihadist Muhammad Allah Al-Khidr”, entered Eagle Valley Elementary School in Utah in a ski-mask and threatened to blow up the school if the children weren’t evacuated. That led to a three hour standoff with police, after which he was booked on charges of interference with an arresting officer, failure to disclose identity, disruption of operation of a school and disorderly conduct, all misdemeanors. He was also charged with threat of terrorism, a second-degree felony.

Craig has been in jail since his arrest and will spend 60 more days in jail before being released. From the Salt Lake Tribune:

Judge Roger Griffin ordered Craig, who has been incarcerated since his arrest in September, to spend 60 more days in the Utah County jail before being released on what Griffin called a “zero-tolerance probation” for the next five years, during which time he will be required to receive treatment for the mental illness doctors, families and lawyers believe caused the once promising basketball coach to act out as a religious fanatic in recent years.

Craig is believed to suffer from schizophrenia as well as bi-polar disorder.

The incident at Eagle Valley was not the first time that Craig had run afoul of the law. In 2013, he was arrested for making terroristic threats in two different states and a year later was arrested after driving a car onto an elementary school playground. He was profiled by Sports Illustrated in 2014.