Bomber’s motive a mystery
Police say video left on phone amounts to a confession
Aand 25-minute cellphone video left behind by the bomber whose deadly explosives terrorised Austin for weeks details the differences among the weapons he built and amounts to a confession, police said. But his motive remains a mystery.
Mark Anthony Conditt, an unemployed college dropout who bought bomb-making materials at Home Depot, recorded the video hours before he died on Wednesday night after detonating one of his own devices as SWAT teams closed in. It seemed to indicate the 23-year-old knew he was about to be caught, said Austin Police Chief Brian Manley.
“It is the outcry of a very challenged young man talking about challenges in his own life,” Manley said of the recording, which authorities declined to release amid the ongoing investigation.
Conditt was tracked down using store surveillance video, cellphone signals and witness accounts of a customer shipping packages in a disguise that included a blond wig and gloves. Police finally found him early at a hotel in a suburb north of Austin.
Officers prepared to move in for an arrest. When the suspect’s SUV began to drive away, they followed. Conditt ran into a ditch on the side of the road, and SWAT officers approached, banging on his window.
Within seconds, the suspect had detonated a bomb inside his vehicle, blasting the officers backward, Manley said. One officer then fired his weapon at Conditt, the chief said. The medical examiner yesterday had not finalised the cause of death, but the bomb caused “significant” injuries, he said.
Law enforcement officials did not immediately say whether Conditt acted alone in the five bombings in the Texas capital and suburban San Antonio that killed two people and badly wounded four others. Fred Milanowski of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said investigators were confident that “the same person built each one of these devices”.
Investigators released few details about Conditt, except his age and that he was white. Neighbours say he was home-schooled. He later attended Austin Community College from 2010 to 2012, according to a college spokeswoman, but he did not graduate.
Conditt’s family released a statement saying they had “no idea of the darkness that Mark must have been in”.
Austin was hit with four bombings starting on March 3. The first explosions were from packages left on doorsteps. Then a bomb with a tripwire was placed near a public trail. A fifth parcel bomb detonated on Wednesday at a FedEx distribution centre near San Antonio.
Congressman Michael McCaul, a Republican from Austin, said Conditt’s “fatal mistake” was walking into a FedEx store to mail a package because that allowed authorities to obtain surveillance video that showed him and his vehicle, along with his licence plate number. From there, investigators could identify the suspect and eventually track him using his cellphone.
Police warned of the possibility that more bombs had yet to be found.
“We don’t know where this suspect has spent his last 24 hours, and therefore we still need to remain vigilant to ensure that no other packages or devices have been left to the community,” Manley said.
Later in the day, federal officials had a “reasonable level of certainty” that there were no more package bombs “out in the public”, said Milanowski, the agent in charge of the Houston division of the ATF. — AP