Family of Austin bombing suspect expresses shock
The family of the man suspected of planting the bombs this month that killed two people and injured four others in the Texas capital expressed shock, saying they don’t know what could have motivated him.
“I mean this is coming from nowhere. We just don’t know what. I don’t know how many ways to say it but everyone is caught off guard by this so, yeah I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean I don’t know,” Mike Courtney, the uncle of 23-year-old Mark Anthony Conditt, said Wednesday.
Authorities say Conditt blew himself up in a motel parking lot overnight as a SWAT team approached his SUV.
Conditt grew up in Pflugerville, a suburb just northeast of Austin where he was still living after moving out of his parents’ home. It’s not far from the site of the first of the four package bombings — a March 2 explosion that killed a 39-year-old man, Anthony House — though it’s unknown if Conditt knew any of the victims and authorities said the motive for the attacks remained unclear.
Conditt’s family said in a statement that they were “devastated and broken” at the news of his involvement. In the statement, the family expressed shock and grief, and offered “prayers for those families who have lost loved ones ... and for the soul of our Mark.”
Courtney, who said Conditt had visited his Lakewood, Colorado, home over Christmas, told The Associated Press he doesn’t “know that anybody saw this coming.” He described his nephew as a smart, intelligent and kind “computer geek.”
“I don’t know what happened, what snapped. I have no idea. Everybody wants and we want answers,” Courtney said.
The family’s statement said they had “no idea of the darkness that Mark must have been in.”
Conditt was the oldest of four children and all of them were home-schooled. Courtney said Conditt’s parents are both electrical engineers.
Authorities released few details about the suspect, aside from his age, that he was white and that he was apparently unemployed. He attended Austin Community College from 2010 to 2012 and was a business administration major, but he did not graduate, according to a college spokeswoman. He worked for a time at an area manufacturing company and Gov. Greg Abbott told KXANTV in Austin that Conditt had no criminal record.
Conditt left little discernable trace on social media. Aside from a few photos of him on his family’s Facebook pages, he apparently made six entries on a personal blog in 2012 in which he addressed a range of topics. In those posts, a blogger identifying himself as Mark Conditt of Pflugerville wrote that gay marriage should be illegal. He also called for the elimination of sex offender registries and argued in favor of the death penalty. He described his interests as cycling, tennis and listening to music.