Man arrested in Florida airport bomb hoax

10/2/2013
REUTERS

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A trucking company worker was arrested on charges of making a false bomb threat that prompted a five-hour evacuation at Jacksonville International Airport in Florida, jail records showed today.

Zeljko Causevic, 39, of Jacksonville, walked up to a Transportation Security Administration agent on Tuesday evening, pointed to his camouflage backpack and said, “I got a bomb in here,” the arrest report said.

He carried a luggage scale, batteries and cell phone in the backpack and had a remote-control device that he referred to as a “detonator,” the report said.

Causevic then told the agent it was “supposed to be a bomb, but it's not.”

The airport was evacuated while a bomb squad checked out his backpack and examined a second suspicious package that was found in a parking lot and determined to be harmless.

Causevic was jailed on charges of making a false report about a bomb and the manufacture or possession of a hoax bomb. He is U.S. citizen born in Bosnia Herzegovina and employed by the Swift Trucking Co., his arrest report said. He has lived in Jacksonville for 15 years, it said.

Causevic appeared before Circuit Judge Russell Healey in a Jacksonville courtroom today. He wore a rumpled green jail uniform and stood with his hands cuffed in front of him, his legs shackled and his head down.

The judge set bond at over $1 million and set Causevic's next court appearance for Oct. 23.

During the confusion on Tuesday night, a second man was arrested in the airport garage on unrelated charges of resisting arrest, investigators and jail records said.

The airport reopened late Tuesday night. Some outgoing flights were canceled this morning but operations returned to normal later in the day.