Police In Austin Texas Say Package Bombs Are Connected

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Anxious Texans huddled inside their homes Monday as investigators scrambled for clues at the scene of another mysterious explosion here, the fourth in a string of attacks this month that authorities say are the work of a sophisticated “serial bomber” who has been terrorizing this city with increasingly complex devices.

The latest blast, which injured two men walking through a residential area Sunday night, marked an escalation in both the tactics and skills displayed by the bomber or bombers, police said. While the three previous bombs were hidden in packages delivered to people’s homes, the fourth device was left on the side of the road and was rigged with a tripwire, showing “a higher level of sophistication, a higher level of skill,” said Brian Manley, the interim Austin police chief.

“What we have seen now is a significant change from what appeared to be three very targeted attacks to what was, last night, an attack that would have hit a random victim that happened to walk by,” Manley said at a news briefing. “So we’ve definitely seen a change in the method.”

Manley said the fourth device had “similarities” with the three bombs that detonated in the Texas capital earlier this month, killing two people and injuring two others, one seriously. The explosion Sunday night plunged the city further into a frightening mystery that has left residents on edge as authorities have seemed at a loss to explain who could be setting off these devices or why.

The first three explosives all hit the eastern part of Austin, affecting areas where black and Hispanic residents live, prompting some to question whether the initial blast would have prompted more urgency had it gone off in a more affluent, predominantly white neighborhood.

“This is a public threat,” Nelson Linder, president of NAACP’s Austin chapter, said Monday. “Now that the geography has changed, it’s going to widen people’s perspectives. Nobody can take this lightly; we’re all vulnerable.”

Police have declined to describe the bombs in detail, saying only they appear to be the sophisticated work of a person or people who know what they are doing — and noting that whoever is responsible has been able to assemble and deliver these packages without setting them off. After telling residents to remain wary of unexpected or suspicious packages, authorities were now urging broader caution.

“We’re even more concerned now that if people see something suspicious, they just stay away from it altogether and contact law enforcement,” said Fred Milanowski, special agent in charge of the Houston division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “Because if they move that package or if they step on that tripwire, it’s likely to detonate.”

Milanowski said devices using tripwires are activated when any pressure is applied to the wires, and he said that can include people “tripping over it or picking up the packages.

The explosion Sunday injured two white men — one 22, the other 23 — walking through Travis Country, a wealthy neighborhood in southwest Austin, far from where the first three devices detonated. The men were taken to a hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries, and Manley said they were in stable condition Monday.

“With this tripwire, this changes things,” said Christopher Combs, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio office. “It’s more sophisticated. It’s not targeted to individuals. We’re very concerned that with tripwires, a child could be walking down the sidewalk and hit something.”

Dan Defenbaugh, a former FBI official who spent decades investigating bomb cases, said the use of a trip wire Sunday “dramatically changes the tactics involved.”

The shift in method – from a bomb targeting an individual or their family to a device targeting a random stranger – raises new challenges for investigators trying to keep the public safe and catch a killer.

“Once a bomb builder makes a device, they usually make it the same way each and every time,” said Defenbaugh, who managed the Oklahoma City bombing investigation. “That’s not happening here. I’m also troubled by the fact that there hasn’t been an extortion demand or communication.”

A package that exploded early Tuesday at a FedEx sorting center near San Antonio was not the only parcel there that investigators believe contained an explosive device, San Antonio Police Chief Bill McManus said.

Tuesday's blast in Schertz, Texas -- which officials said injured one FedEx worker -- came as four explosions, two of them deadly, have rattled the city of Austin, about an hour's drive northeast of Schertz, since March 2. The latest developments, including the revelation of the second package and hundreds more reports of dubious parcels, added to a mounting anxiety that one official described as "absolute panic."
"There was one other package" besides the one that exploded Tuesday at the FedEx facility in Schertz "that we believe was also loaded with an explosive device," McManus said late Tuesday morning during a news conference. That second parcel was no longer at the facility, and authorities were "working on" it, he said.

7:27 p.m. update: A man in his 30s has been taken to St. David’s South Austin Medical Center with potentially serious injuries after another explosion was reported at a Goodwill in South Austin, Austin-Travis EMS said.

The injuries are not expected to be life-threatening, EMS said.

According to preliminary information, it appears authorities have also found what they believe is a second bomb at the same location. Austin police officials have not confirmed the information.

The Austin Fire Department said on Twitter shortly after 7 p.m. local time (8 p.m. ET) that it was on the scene at a "reported package explosion,” and emergency management officials said a man in his 30s was taken to a hospital with injuries that are not believed to be life-threatening.

Austin police later said on Twitter that the “items inside package was not a bomb, rather an incendiary device," and that "at this time, we have no reason to believe this incident is related to previous package bombs.

The box that was dropped off at a Goodwill and given to an employee to dispose of "had 2 small devices that were artillery simulators that looks like some type of military ordnance or some type of memento. The employee handled one of those devices at which time it initiated," Austin police assistant chief Ely Reyes told reporters.

"After our investigation on scene, we did determine that this was not an explosive device. This incident is not related to any of the other incidents that we've had here in Austin," he said.

are these new bombs continuing the anti-colored folk trend of the first 3?

Supposedly caught and killed.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/21/us/austi ... index.html

A 24 year old white man.

If anyone finds out the motive, then please post.

The suspected Austin serial bomber who apparently killed himself early Wednesday as authorities closed in on him was Pflugerville resident Mark A. Conditt, local and federal law enforcement sources told the American-Statesman and KVUE.

The 23-year-old, who federal prosecutors identified as the Austin bomber, can be seen in surveillance photos obtained by Fox News dropping off two suspicious packages on Sunday from inside a South Austin FedEx Office store on Brodie Lane.

Police said Wednesday morning that they believe Mark Conditt created all of the explosive devices used in the recent bombings himself.

They are not sure how he spent his last 24 hours and cautioned Austinites to remain vigilant in case he placed bombs that have yet to go off.

Jeff Lewis, 40, a close friend of House at Pflugerville High School, where the pair ran track on several highly decorated teams, said he didn’t know quite what to make of that connection. “I’m surprised,” he said Wednesday morning. “It hits even closer to home than I thought.”

Conditt, who was homeschooled and attended Austin Community College’s Northridge Campus, died early Wednesday when he apparently detonated a bomb in his vehicle as police closed in on him near Round Rock.

In 2012, when he was 17 years old, Austin bombing suspect Mark Conditt laid out his political views in a series of blog posts he wrote for an Austin Community College course on U.S. government.

On the blog, Conditt described himself as a conservative. It’s not clear whether politics played any role in the bombings, but the blog posts provide insight into Conditt’s thinking as he was growing up.

He wrote that he was against gay marriage and abortion and in favor of the death penalty.

He also wrote that he supported doing away with the sex offender registration system.

“So you have a guy who committed a crime. Will putting him on a (sex offender) list make it better? wouldn’t this only make people shun him, keep him from getting a job, and making friends? Just for a crime that he may have committed over 15 years ago as a adolescent? On a side note, one fifth of all rapes are committed by a juvenile,” Conditt wrote.

On abortion, he wrote: “First, if a women does not want a baby, or is incapable of taking care of one, she should not participate in activities that were made for that reason. Second, if we are going to give women free abortions, why not give men free condoms, or the like? Is it not up to the couple to take these preventive measures?”

Arguing against gay marriage, he wrote that homosexuality is “not natural.”

“Just look at the male and female bodies. They are obviously designed to couple. The natural design is apparent. It is not natural to couple male with male and female with female. It would be like trying to fit two screws together and to nuts together and then say, “See, it’s natural for them to go together.”

Conditt attended ACC from 2010 to 2012 with a declared major of business administration, however he never graduated, school officials said. He took general education courses at the Northridge and Round Rock campuses and left the school in good academic standing, ACC said.