Blasts have Austin on edge
Police think the three exploding packages that detonated at homes over a 10-day period are all connected.
AUSTIN, Texas — Police said Monday that the three exploding packages that detonated at homes in this city across a 10-day period — including two blasts on Monday — are all connected, although precisely what motivated the attacks remained an unnerving mystery.
The explosions across residential parts of the Texas capital killed two people, seriously injured two others and set residents on edge, even as the city continued hosting South by Southwest, a music, film and technology conference that draws tens of thousands of visitors each year.
Police urged residents to call 911 rather than open unexpected packages, while local and federal authorities scrambled to respond to the blasts, at one point Monday hurrying from one explosion to another across town.
Authorities say they are exploring whether the explosions could be related to racial hatred, noting that both of the people killed — an adult man and a teenager — were black, while an elderly Latino woman was seriously injured.
“These incidents are related,” Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said at a briefing. But as for what might have prompted the string of explosions, he said: “We are not ruling anything out at this point.”
The first explosion occurred March 2, when a package on the front porch of a northeast Austin home exploded, killing 39-yearold Anthony Stephan House.
At the time, police said House’s death was “suspicious” but believed it was an isolated incident with no continuing threat to the community.
Ten days later, that changed when a pair of packages detonated at homes several miles apart Monday over a matter of hours.
Investigators were still responding to the first explosion Monday morning — which killed a 17-yearold male and seriously injured an adult woman — when a second blast detonated at a house farther south, sending a 75-yearold Hispanic woman to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Reached by phone Monday, LaVonne Mason, cofounder of the Austin Area Urban League, said her grandson was the 17-yearold victim killed Monday morning, but she declined to say anything further. Her husband, Norman Mason, is a well-known dentist in the East Austin area and a longtime mentor to black student athletes at the University of Texas.
Relatives on the scene identified the woman injured in the third blast as Esperanza Herrera. They also said her mother, Maria Moreno, suffered minor injuries.
Manley said that just as in the other bombings, the injured woman came outside her home, found a package and picked it up.
“The box detonated at that point,” he said.
Manley said police did not know if the victims who were killed or injured were the specific targets of the packages. The police chief warned residents to avoid opening unexpected packages or other deliveries they were not expecting.
“It’s not time to panic, but it’s time to be vigilant,” he said.
The FBI was assisting with the investigation, and spokeswoman Michelle Lee said agents were “definitely not ruling out” a hate crime.