SAN ANTONIO – Bexar County Sheriff Amadeo Ortiz is calling the county courthouse break-in by five foreign nationals with French visas as harmless bar hoppers just goofing around. The five men are their twenties and described as French-Moroccan Muslims.
Sheriff Ortiz said Wednesday the five men had been out drinking and appeared to pose no security threat. The men were in their 20s and had French addresses, but their nationalities were unclear.
The sheriff says three of the men scaled the fire escape and broke a fourth floor to get into the courthouse. The others were found in and around an RV parked in front of the building.
The men were arrested around 1:30 a.m. Police closed several downtown blocks and brought in bomb-sniffing dogs. Investigators with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Sheriff’s Office interviewed the five detainees.
Authorities released a surveillance photo of two of them wearing sombreros while running down a hallway. A beer bottle was found in one courtroom.
Ortiz says heightened national security justified the response after the men were identified as foreign nationals traveling in an RV.