The Texas A&M University Police Department arrested Texas A&M Professor Russell Johns on Aug. 13 for indecent exposure that allegedly occurred on UT campus.
A&M police officers arrested Johns on a warrant from UTPD according to the warrant returned by Brazos County. He now awaits trial.
Johns served on UT’s petroleum engineering faculty for 15 years until 2010 before taking another job at Pennsylvania State University, according to a KBTX article, a CBS afiliate that serves Bryan, Texas. Johns was expected to start teaching at A&M in the fall, according to the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering in a celebratory social media post from July, and is now suspended.
The warrant states that Johns was visiting campus at the time of the incident after the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering invited him to campus. UT police officers responded to a report of a suspicious person at the William C. Powers Student Activity Center on April 29. A building manager told a UTPD officer that a student saw Johns masturbating, according to the affidavit. Directly after the incident, UTPD officers released Johns with a criminal trespass warning.
When UTPD followed up with the witness in May, she said Johns “expose(d) his genitals while staring at two female UT students” while holding a piece of paper in front of his face as if reading, according to the affidavit.
Botsford & Roark, the law firm representing Johns, did not immediately provide a comment.
Johns joined the university in 1995, and during his time at UT, he won multiple teaching awards and served in multiple University committees. A Texas A&M spokesperson confirmed that Johns was hired after the “alleged incident” that occurred at the WCP in April, but before the arrest.
“He was not an employee at the time, and the university had no knowledge of the allegation when he was hired,” the statement wrote. “He has never taught and is currently on suspension.”
After Johns was arrested, he was released on a $7,500 cash bond. Bond conditions include that Johns cannot make contact with the victims or the victim’s family without court approval, commit any other criminal activity and must submit to random drug tests at the discretion of the court.
