Many just won’t say ‘terrorist’

Mark must have been in,” said the family statement given to CNN.

“Our family is a normal family in every way. We love, we pray, and we try to inspire and serve others. Right now, our prayers are for those families that have lost loved ones, for those impacted in any way, and for the soul of our Mark. We are grieving and we are in shock,” they said.

Conditt attended Austin Community College six years ago and made disturbing blog posts for a U.S. government class project, the school confirmed Wednesday.

“Homosexuality is not natural,” he wrote for the 2012 blog titled, “Defining my Stance.”

“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,” he wrote.

He also recommended “doing away with sex offender registration” and decried “free abortions.”

“If you can’t provide for a child, then don’t have sex,” he wrote.

During his recent reign of terror, Conditt bought some of his bomb-making materials from a local Home Depot, lawmakers said.

They included five “CAUTION CHILDREN AT PLAY” signs, at least one of which he used to secure a tripwire on a bomb that went off Sunday night, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said.

He also reportedly used “exotic” batteries purchased online to build as many as six package bombs left around Austin.

Conditt lived in Pflugerville, about 20 miles north of Austin, where he had two roommates. Several blocks were evacuated around his home Wednesday as authorities used a robot and other techniques to search the area.

Abbott said Conditt’s roommates were cooperating with investigators.

At least four of Conditt’s explosives detonated since March 2, leading to panic, lockdowns and ongoing worry Wednesday that more might remain undiscovered.

Speculation about what drove Conditt to Wednesday. kill also continued

“I think the question a lot of people have is, ‘Why? What motivated him?’ Hopefully we’ll get some answers looking at his social media and whatever is found in the home,” McCaul told The News.

He said authorities initially thought the suspect may have targeted House and Mason based on race. Both were African-American. No such conclusion has been announced.

“We still can’t rule that out — that this was some sort of hate crime. But we can’t get inside his head,” McCaul said. AUSTIN BOMBER Mark Conditt stoked fear in Texas with a string of deadly explosions in the state’s capital — yet authorities are hesitating to call the 23-year-old white man a terrorist.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott avoided the label Wednesday in an interview with Fox News.

“The definition of a terrorist is more the mindset of the person who committed the crime,” said Abbott, a Republican. “Was his goal to terrorize or did he have some other type of agenda?”

Abbott acknowledged the attacks brought “terror” to Austin, but he questioned whether Conditt was “trying to achieve more than terror.”

Several experts said an attack must be politically motivated to qualify as terrorism. Without an established motive, they said, Conditt’s actions do not yet meet that threshold.

“There are hazards in designating something an act of terrorism prematurely, so I think officials are appropriately cautious about jumping to designate somebody as a terrorist,” said Chuck Strozier, director of the Center on Terrorism at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Gregory Vecchi, a criminal justice professor at Missouri Western State University, said terrorists don’t target individuals.

“Does it terrorize people? Yes. Is it terrorism? No,” Vecchi said. “Because there’s a legal definition on terrorism. You’re not targeting any one person, you’re targeting groups of people.”

But critics were outraged that the terrorism label has quickly been applied to nonwhite criminals.

“Let me get this straight, a suicide bomber murdered people then blew himself up but they’re not calling him a ‘terrorist’ because he’s white?” Airborne Toxic Event singer Mikel Jollett wrote on Twitter. “If the Austin bomber had been Muslim, the National Guard would be on the streets of Texas by now.” Public figures weighed in, too. “If this terrorist bomber was a brown guy, my mom wouldn’t be able to leave her house for a week,” said Pakistani-American comedian Kumail Nanjiani.

Little is known about what led Conditt, 23, to plant at least six bombs across Austin, causing weeks of panic and fear.

The first explosions targeted prominent African-American families, but two white men were injured by another explosive linked to Conditt.