Former coach arrested in Utah Valley again

Another arrest for former College of Eastern Utah basketball coach Chris Craig who was taken into custody in Utah County.

Craig, 36, of Saratoga Springs, has a history of mental illness and was convicted of threatening to blow up an elementary school in 2016.

According to court documents, authorities said he stopped taking his medication as ordered by a judge, threatened his family and prompted the school he terrorized two years ago to be placed on alert again.

On April 24, Craig’s wife contacted authorities about emails she had received from Chris. The emails were similar to the ones he had sent in the past when he was unstable and not on his medications. On April 26, a warrant was issued for Craig’s arrest and he was arrested May 1.

KSL.com reported the warrant said Craig was involved in a car crash on Easter. Prior to that time, he was doing “fairly well.”

“It seemed after this crash, he has spiraled downward. It appears he has not been taking his medications as prescribed and has slipped into religious paranoid,” the affidavit stated.

In 2013, he was arrested for making terroristic threats in two different states and a year later was arrested after driving a car onto the Castle Heights Elementary School ground in Price where his daughter attended.

He was profiled in Sports Illustrated in 2014 where it said Craig has a history of hospitalization for mental illness. His family told the magazine that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, similar to what his mother had died from a few years earlier.

Craig coached five years at CEU, two years as an assistant and three years as head coach. His final year, his Golden Eagles finished as the third best junior college team in the 2010 NJCAA Tournament. When he was appointed as head coach, he was the youngest head college coach in the nation at 25 years old.

Chris is the father of three children who live in Saratoga Springs.