Bismarck police were still looking Friday evening for the man who told an acquaintance at Kirkwood Mall he was going to cause problems at the Bismarck Civic Center and "blow them up," according to a police news release.

The man's comments resulted in the evacuation of Century High School graduating seniors and the rest of the crowd at the beginning of the 5 p.m. ceremony.

The acquaintance of the suspect, who just knows the suspect's first name, called police at 5 p.m. Friday to report the comments.

He described the suspect as having on a white T-shirt, white baseball cap and a purple and gold letterman's jacket and that he was the passenger in a white late-model Dodge Caravan, which had Schwan Pontiac paper plates on it.

Police have obtained the full name of a possible suspect, who is age 20 and is 5 feet 8 inches tall and 174 pounds. But they don't know if it's the same person, and still hadn't found the person Friday evening, and so weren't releasing the name.

Century High School's graduation ceremony had just begun at 5 p.m. Sunday when Paul Johnson, Bismarck's school superintendent, was called off the stage and told by a school resource officer that there had been a bomb threat, Johnson said Friday.

He said the resource officer had received a cell phone call from the Bismarck Police Department informing him that someone at Kirkwood Mall had told another person there that he had planted a bomb in the civic center and it was set to explode during the ceremony.

More recent information from police said the suspect's wording didn't include "bomb," just that he was "going to cause problems…and he was going (to) blow them up," according to the news release.

Johnson said the person the suspect told then called police, giving them a good description of the person.

Johnson said because of the amount of information police had about the suspect, school officials decided to go ahead with the National Anthem - giving police about five minutes to try to resolve the situation and find the suspect.

Time passed with no resolution and the decision was made to inform the crowd of the bomb threat and instruct them to return at 6:30 p.m. after the police department's bomb squad had time to sweep the building.

Johnson said to his knowledge this has never happened in this school district, before.

At 6 p.m., the civic center was reopened and people were allowed to return for the ceremony, said Bismarck Police Lt. Doug Ketterling.

He said the building was opened early after a sweep had been conducted. He said he assumes the early opening was because the "civic center, the manager and our people over there" had determined the situation was safe.

Ketterling, at about 6:10 p.m., said they were still looking for the suspect and the department wasn't releasing any information about the individual at this point.