Grand jury indicts St. Thomas student on additional charges in bomb threat case

Ray Persaud was charged with three additional counts in the bomb threat hoax case Wednesday. (TommieMedia file photo)

Ray Ghansham Persaud, 20, faces three additional federal charges in connection with hoax bomb threats over the last year at St. Thomas, according to a grand jury indictment filed Wednesday.

According to the indictment, Persaud has been charged with three additional counts related to the three bomb threat incidents on the dates April 17, Aug. 20 and Sept. 17.

As of Thursday, Oct. 10, no date has been set for an arraignment, which is the next step in the legal process.

The Pioneer Press reports Persaud is not in custody. He was still jailed after his last hearing, but the judge was in the process of allowing Persaud to be under surveillance in the home his grandmother and cousin in Fridley.

Persaud, identified by St. Thomas as a commuter, was first charged in September with one felony count of “using an instrumentality of interstate commerce to make a threat to kill, injure or intimidate any individual, and to damage or destroy any building, by means of fire and explosive.”

In the past six months, three separate bomb threat incidents occurred at St. Thomas, most recently on Sept. 17. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said the FBI determined Persaud called via Voice Over Internet Protocol through multiple apps that allow the use of multiple phone numbers.

The first threat, called in on April 17 to the campus switchboard, informed officials of a bomb on campus. McNeely Hall was named in a second call that led to an evacuation of the building. A third call named another building, which resulted in officials closing the St. Paul campus.

On Aug. 20, a second threat was called into the campus switchboard, naming John Roach Center as the location of the threat. JRC was evacuated and all classes in the building were canceled for the remainder of the day.

According to the criminal complaint, St. Thomas’ Public Safety Department looked through the telephones connected to the campus Wi-Fi network on the morning of Aug. 20 and found that one of those phones had been named “Ray’s phone.”

The third threat was called in at 7:24 a.m. Sept. 17, five months to the date after the first incident. The campus switchboard received “numerous calls in a row,” giving different information in each, according to St. Thomas Public Safety Director Dan Meuwissen.

On Sept. 17, the caller stated there were four bombs, naming O’Shaughnessy Science Center, the John Roach Center and the Anderson Student Center; in a later phone call the Facilities Design Center was named as well, according to the complaint. The buildings named temporarily closed and classes resumed in the buildings that afternoon.

Calls from the third threat were traced to Persuad’s home address, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Abby Sliva and Emily Haugen contributed to this report.