Charles F. McElhinney Hall was evacuated around 12:45 p.m., according to students and the UH Department of Public Safety. An email sent from UH DPS at 2:11 p.m. said the evacuation was linked to a non-specific handwritten bomb threat. By 7:30 p.m., UH Police Chief Ceasar Moore said UH DPS had swept all main campus buildings and no suspicious devices were found.
Large groups of evacuated students and staff awaited more information behind the Lamar Fleming Jr. building after being told to exit the building.
Anthropology junior Sims Hardin said news of the evacuation came just before his class started.
“Three police officers came in and told people not to panic and that they had to evacuate the building. I think everybody was pretty confused,” Hardin said.
Political science senior Kareem Karachiwala said graffiti in the far right stall of the first-floor men’s restroom of the building could be to blame for the evacuation.
“There is a little bit of graffiti that talked about some bomb going off or something. I think it said at 1 p.m. or something. It was written in red,” Karachiwala said.
“I saw it today, but I just assumed it was graffiti like everything else.”
For more information on this and any other police updates, visit uh.edu/emergency.
Update: This story was updated at 7:35 p.m. to include new information after the campus was swept and cleared.
Additional reporting by Natalie Harms.