Lockdown lifted at University of Iowa’s Jessup Hall

IOWA CITY - Just hours after classes started for the first day of the fall semester, the bomb squad was called Monday morning to examine a backpack left in the Jessup Hall office suite of the University of Iowa president.

Jessup Hall was evacuated and cordoned off with crime scene tape - drawing a curious crowd to the UI's Pentacrest - but about three hours after the episode began authorities determined there was no dangerous material in the backpack and gave the all clear.

Interim UI president Jean Robillard was not in that office during the incident.

According to a UI news release, the male student was 'behaving erratically” in the president's office and was transported to the hospital for evaluation.

UI spokeswoman Jeneane Beck said the episode began when university police received a call that a man was acting strangely at Phillips Hall. The man then apparently crossed Clinton Street to go to Jessup Hall. He was detained by police, but left a backpack in a conference room in the office.

The Johnson County bomb squad determined the backpack posed no danger, and also conducted a broader sweep of Jessup Hall before people were left back in.

Jessup Hall holds four classrooms, three class labs, a computer lab and 188 offices, Beck said.