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Watching the bizarre event unfold on a live video stream Monday, Rus Bradburd was confident in a couple of things: First, the children and teachers at an Eagle Mountain elementary school were not in any real trouble.

Second, his good friend certainly was.

"I was 100 percent sure there were no guns and no explosives," Bradburd said Tuesday. "I would have walked up dribbling a basketball and he would have talked to me."

As Christopher DeWitt Craig remained locked up in the Utah County jail after an empty bomb threat and standoff that forced the evacuation of a school, the man's friends lamented the struggles of a once promising young basketball coach and hoped the 35-year-old man would be given the help he needs to lift him from the depths of what they called severe mental illness.

On Monday, Craig walked into Eagle Valley Elementary, police said, wearing a ski mask and a long, light-green tunic, and claiming to have parked a car full of explosives near the front door. He also told a school employee to evacuate the building so no one would be hurt.

Jimmy Bosserman first heard of the bomb threat from his aunt, who sent him a message to let him know his two young cousins, both students at the school, were safe. Bosserman watched as more details of the incident came in, and, when police released the suspect's name, he was shocked.

"This cannot be him," Bosserman thought. "But it was."

A young coach's rise

As a freshman College of Eastern Utah (CEU) guard during the 2009-10 basketball season, Bosserman and the Golden Eagles took third place among the nation's junior colleges, thanks in part to their young, energetic head coach: Christopher Craig.

He was 25 years old when he got the job, and his age at first frightened the school's hiring committee.

"I guaranteed them, if they hired him, he was going to be one of the best recruiters you've ever seen, and he was," said Dave Paur, the athletic director at the Price school, now called Utah State University Eastern.

For Paur, a former coach himself, Craig possessed a spirit that conveyed confidence.

"He had linebacker eyes," Paur said. "Super intense. You looked at him and you just know he means business."

Craig delivered for the school, in his recruiting and his coaching — and he was intensely focused on both.

"He had a little bit of a temper issue, but most coaches do, so it didn't seem abnormal to me," Bosserman said.

Craig went on to coaching jobs in Midland, Texas, and Northern Colorado, where he continued to make good on the potential Bradburd saw in him a few years earlier.

Craig had played two years for the University of Texas at El Paso, but it wasn't until later that he met Bradburd, a former UTEP assistant. Bradburd had been coaching in Ireland when a UTEP radio analyst called to ask whether he might help Craig land a job, and Bradburd helped concoct a plan to turn Craig into an Irish team's player-coach.

He was 23, the youngest player on the team, but Craig commanded respect.

"When he said something, they jumped," Bradburd said. "It wasn't like he was a maniac with them. He had their attention and their confidence, and he had this tremendous charisma."

With Craig at the helm, the team won the national cup and Craig earned MVP and Coach of the Year honors. From there, the young coach saw his star begin to rise.

'It all just snapped'

"I told friends he's going to be a head [Division I] coach by the time he was 30," Bradburd said. "I thought he would be the next Bill Self or Rick Pitino. … He had everything going for him. Everything had gone his way, and then it all just snapped and broke."

What happened, when things went wrong, is hard to say. Friends pointed to troubles during Craig's childhood, to his sudden disappearance into the desert for a few days during his time as a player, to his struggles in coaching and to the sudden death of his friend and former CEU assistant coach Brad Barton.

"If he had any tendencies to go in the wrong direction, that might have pushed him," Paur said. "Brad's death really, really affected him."

Craig begin to exhibit signs of mental illness.

He was arrested in Arizona in July 2013 after he allegedly entered a classroom at Eastern Arizona College, where he waved a Bible and asked the teacher if he was Mormon. In August 2013, authorities in Colorado warned churches about Craig because he had been announcing that Mormons and Catholics "would be destroyed" in the coming weeks.

He posted long, rambling tirades about religion on his blog. When Bradburd sent him photos from a former player's wedding a few years back, Craig responded with a missive, stating that "when the world ends, the one place you don't want to be is Minnesota."

But Craig's friends say he seemed to have stabilized in recent months.

In a 2014 Sports Illustrated article about Craig, his father suggested that Craig had schizophrenia; the magazine reported that Craig had spent time in a state mental hospital.

When he saw him last Christmas, Paur said, Craig's mental health had improved. No longer was he trying to convince his former boss that he was Michael the Archangel or trying to pitch him on starting his own religion. And about two months ago, Paur said, Craig stopped by his office in Price to talk.

"It seemed like everything was OK," Paur said, "at that time."

'A great tragedy'

On Monday, however, Craig allegedly followed through with his latest and most extreme episode. The man sent messages to multiple news organizations, saying his bomb threat would be part of a campaign against black people who challenge racism. He also promised a hunger strike in jail.

"Racism is the reason for my hunger strike," reads the email, in which the sender identified himself as Christopher Craig and as "the radical Islamic jihadist Muhammad Allah Al-Khidr."

"… And this day I go to kill myself in jail in honor of the most racially targeted group of humans = white police officers," the email continues. "I can't donate money or post on Instagram, but my life I lay down for you to the death. Thanks fellas, it is truly an honor."

More than two hours after the school had been evacuated, Craig complied with police and allowed himself to be arrested. He is being held in the Utah County jail on suspicion of threat of terrorism, a second-degree felony; interference with an arresting officer, a class B misdemeanor; failure to disclose identity, a class B misdemeanor; disrupting operation of a school, a class B misdemeanor; and disorderly conduct, a class C misdemeanor. Bail was set at $25,000, cash only.

Utah County sheriff's Sgt. Spencer Cannon said formal charges could be filed soon.

Craig's friends, meanwhile, continue to search for answers and hope for the once promising coach.

"It is," Bradburd said, "a great tragedy what's happened."

Twitter: @aaronfalk