Austin Explosions Put City on Edge as Police Hunt ‘Serial Bomber’

Once again, we are reminded of the deadly effectiveness of terrorism. We can spend billions of dollars on defense and discuss building a nuclear missile shield to keep us safe but (presumably) one person with $20 worth of purchases from a local hardware store can terrorize a city of one million inhabitants.

Is it not suspicious that the timing of this is occurring just as "NRA-ers" are making the argument that "it's not the guns"; and that gun control won't solve anything. These crimes are horrible, but they've also distracted media attention from the gun issue.

Can someone please tell me why we are not using the word “terrorism” to describe these events?

I read or heard one report that first three recipients of packages were black. Haven’t seen it since. If so, it should be reported. Presume that investigators would be considering that.

"We don't know his reasons..." How's that for a nice bit of sexist misandry on the part of the authorities. It's my understanding that there has been no communication from the perpatrator of these bombings so how could they know if the bomber is male or female?

With the Kacynski bombings 30 years ago or so, eventually the guy's brother figured out it was Ted Kacynski, and he led the FBI to his brother. Let us hope some family member, friend or neighbor of the bomber soon figures out who this guy is, and saves the rest of us from this guy's twisted thinking and actions.

I'd look for someone who served in a bomb unit. Sounds like the person is pretty knowledgeable.

I find it insulting and infuriating that tripping the wire by a child is worst than by an adult. Both lives are equally important. If there is "invisible" line anchored that anyone can trip it is very bad regardless of who trips it. I wonder if this idiot has made any demands! The authorities should put out a word for this person to learn his grievance and what can be done to fix it. This person has already crossed the line as there are fatalities by his work and going on this way he is gonna senselessly kill more people. It's looking a lot like that random sniper shooter on the east coast some years ago...

The facts that half this comment thread is about speculating on the bombers race, gender, political identities shows our national neurosis.

"A serial bomber is suspected..." Wow. Who's in charge of the case? Captain Obvious?

there is now a fifth bomb

Someone knows who did this. Offered sufficient tax free $, with guaranteed anonymity for setting up a successful prosecution, they would tell. That I believe.

Was the trip wire stretched across a road or a bike path? Could a car have set off the bomb, or only a bicycle or pedestrian? I ask because bicyclists are another focus of white male rage in this country, at least from what I have observed first-hand. Mooretep, of course no one knows if the perpetrator is a man. But the investigators are looking at the people who have committed this kind of crime in the past, and I suspect they have been largely male. This is why we told our children if they were ever lost, ask a woman for help.

Am sure if the bomber wanted to be caught he would have contacted the police by now. So for the police to ask the bomber to contact them seems off the charts. IT is a college town I would look for someone young and intelligent who is doing this

It is puzzling that investigators are fixated on a reason WHY a crime is being committed. Sometimes people don't need a reason. They just enjoy planning and carrying out their darkest fantasies and being the centre of attention in the outcry and media hullabaloo that inevitably follows. It makes them feel important. Not every criminal has an agenda or a financial or political motive.

Someone or some people have to have seen the bomber in the neighborhoods but they may not be putting two and two together. The police should meet with groups of residents and ask if anyone recalls seeing someone or something that seems unusual in retrospect. And also to be on the alert starting now. The smallest of things can give this person away.

How do they know it's a man?

Who cares if the bomber is conservative, liberal, white, black, christian, or muslim? So what if this person is white or right wing? Are you going to be like Trump waiting for that "I told you so" moment and try to politicize the events? This person is a coward and a murderer. Plain and simple. Let the real investigators do the work to identify the suspect.

Maybe folks should just ease off on the speculation and eagerness to lay blame, and wait too see what evidence the professionals turn up in their investigation.

Evil will use any tool to do harm to the innocent. Words, Guns and now Bombs. Somethings is really wrong in our culture. Why all the violence?

Austin should be a peaceful place!

All we want to do here is eat bbq and tacos (sometimes bbq tacos), do some swimming, and listen to music. It’s not too much to ask right?

There are many in America who seem to feel it's a country at civil war. Open carry and stand your ground laws, hate protests, the minefield of social media discourse. You cannot watch American network tv without seeing violence, hate, sickness, killing and that includes the commercials, children programs. Of course one sick individual is responsible for these acts, but America's current mentality just spurs these people on, and gives them the perfect stage to act upon. Killing and terrorism is cool in American culture. This is a sign the terror is not abating, and may even be escalating. It's really tragic and horrifying.

Austin is a very progressive community surrounded by very right wing communities. The distribution of these attacks makes me think that they are an attack by a far right winger against the entire progressive community of Austin. This has happened once before in the 1966 sniper attack on the University of Texas campus.

I totally sympathize with the residents of Austin, as a New Yorker. I recall when the bomb went off at 23rd and 6th, rattling my windows, with that gut-shaking thump. Luckily nobody was killed, but it was a close thing. I think this bomber and the bomber that came close to killing me (as I'd passed by that bomb site earlier in the evening) have some things in common. They're men, of course, and between 20 and 30, the most hostile and thoughtless age of man. Their minds are like piles of worms, squirming in constant motion, no coherence to them, no compassion. They're paranoid and fully delusional, and they think their random attacks are in pursuit of some greater goal. I hope Austin residents are careful and watchful, and that they get this guy. Once he's apprehended, after a fair trial, he'll need to be locked up for life. There's just nothing you can do with a guy like that, other than lock him up for life, or kill him, and killing him turns out to be more expensive and merciful.

It's high time that we close our borders to these terrorists. Oh, wait...

"'These events in Austin have garnered worldwide attention, and we assure you that we are listening,' Chief Manley said in addressing the unknown bomber or bombers at the earlier news conference." In this age of instant, free, aggregated news, where you can easily get the world's attention, we should consider the possibility that a significant proportion of violent events, including school shootings, are no different from most of President Trump's tweets, efforts to get attention. While they should not be ignored, neither should they be so blown out of proportion that they feed into an individual's desire for fifteen minutes of fame. Having a zillion "friends" on Facebook, followers on Twitter, and 24/7 coverage for some outrageous action are all of a piece, a way to convince oneself and, in our world where celebrity equates with importance and consequence, actually be "somebody" of note. No room for all of it here, but Brad Paisley's song, "Celebrity" spells it out nicely. A few excerpts: "Someday I'm gonna be famous, do I have talent well no These days you don't really need it thanks to reality shows Can't wait to date a supermodel, can't wait to sue my dad Can't wait to wreck a Ferrari on my way to rehab 'Cause when you're a celebrity It adios reality No matter what you do People think you're cool Just 'cause you're on TV I'll make the supermarket tabloids, they'll write some awful stuff But the more they run my name down the more my price goes up."

Draylen Mason was killed in one of these package explosions. At 17, already an inspired and inspiring musician, a double bass player, planning to attend Butler School of Music at the University of Texas, Austin. He performed with the Austin Youth Orchestra and Austin Soundwaves. There is A Your Caring Campaign and a Facebook Memorial Page in his name. I saw his photo this afternoon when looking up a cellist who will be performing locally. His mother was critically injured in the blast. Violence, aggression, hatred of self and other. Draylen has been taken from all future possibilities. How unequivocally cruel. As a humanity we are failing each other in some primal, essential way, so prone it seems to destroy. Regardless of label, our collective we has a problem. Pointed fingers, pointed guns, nasty, aggressive acting out by any means possible. How we got here? We are here. We all know firsthand. Noisy and screaming neighbors, identity theft, greedy, unprofessional doctors and hospitals, realtors who scrape you into the ground to gain advantage, myriad assaults upon whoever is perceived as weaker, damaging another, lying, to make things seem fragrant while hiding the truth. Arsenals of weapons and chemicals, all about destruction, the negation of one another. Weeping for the most recently destroyed. We are killing our own species without a qualm. I pray for this beautiful boy whose music I will never hear to heal my soul. May he and those who mourn find peace.

It seems to appear given the earlier targets that the killer is perhaps an ex-military trained Southern neo-Confederate, KKK and/or neo-NAZI type who messed up on his last strike on the two white guys, but it was dark and everybody looks dark in the dark, but all the same this guy's a likely Trump supporter, and knowing Trump's father was arrested in 1927 in New York at a Klu Klux Klan riot, there are no surprises here, regarding Trump's lack of care about the situation. We shall see what we shall see? It should be illuminating!

The first three targeted people of color. The most recent caught two white men, but it was random. Perhaps as community leaders and residents became more vocal in their speculation that the attacks were hate crimes, the perpetrator decided it was time to throw law enforcement off the scent ...

and not a word from our tough on terror president. well, as far as i am concerned, he is responsible for this. and im not going to bother to list all the ways he has ruined our civil society, possibly permanently. Jefferson Wept.

Nice to see our President offer his support and the full cooperation of the FBI in helping to identify this person Oh wait - we're currently dragging the FBI through the mud to discredit an active investigation into the highest office.

Might I suggest a different motive? A very disgruntled former employee of Amazon, or someone who "has it in" for Amazon for all sorts of reasons. Having packages blow up at the front door -- precisely where almost all Amazon packages are left -- would be an "effective" way of depressing sales and making an "economic-political" statement (about hyper-capitalism? ruthless monopolies? Not my opinion -- but very well could be the perpetrator's). Indeed, have the police tried to see whether these blown up packages have any "Amazon" sign on them? And if one wants to be particularly "nefarious", perhaps s/he is now employed by UPS or FedEx, so that it would be easy to "electronically" mark the package as delivered, take it home, plant the bomb, and return it within a few hours. The householder would be expecting to receive an Amazon package and would not be suspicious!

These are just misgivings, the real victim may be targeted in future, making it a serial killer profile, but actually it is just to misguide the police, and mislead the nature of hunt - overwhelm them.

The person is driving into Austin on I35 it appears to me. They are all off that highway, not too far out. And I know that we have to wait to call it terrorism until there is a clear political agenda, but this really is terrorism.

It's possible that the 4th bomb was detonated in the mostly white neighborhood to throw the authorities off to trick them into believing this is not racially motivated.

The police seem a little too focused on motive. Austin might simply have encountered a homicidal hobbyist. If the suspect has gone to the trouble of learning how to make sophisticated IEDs with household materials, there's a good chance the individual wants to practice the skill. Any political motivation appears secondary to the nature of the crime: Blow people up. My insight probably isn't very helpful to law enforcement. However, this scenario first explains the highly localized nature of events and second, the apparent randomness of the attacks. If you consider triggering homemade bombs with lethal effect the singular motivation, the pattern is self-apparent. The only discernible deviation from terrorism, domestic or otherwise, is an apparent desire not to get caught. Ideological violence normally prefers to self-announce itself. The killer generally seems to want public recognition for their murder. That doesn't seem to be the case here. The police might be overthinking this one.

Has no one speculated yet that this might be an ode to the unabomber, Ted Kaczynski? Remember the guy who bombed technologists and computer retailers for accelerating industrialization through computing? In his manifestos, he attacked mainly leftists and progressives (as unnatural and mentally ill), but also conservatives (as hypocritical tools espousing "values") so I wonder if these victims fit some kind of political profile or technologically-oriented profile via internet comments or memberships in targeted organizations? Professors, writers and pundits (Keith Ablow) have written essays praising the content of Kaczynski's writings, which have been compiled and released (in 2010). When was the last time there was a serial mailbomber other than Ted Kaczynski? I haven't read everything on the recent bombings, but this was the first association that popped in my head.

Why were none of these bombs planted in the vicinity of SXSW? SXSW was in Austin much of the same period and explosions in its vicinity would have been significantly disruptive. The answer, I think, is that there was too much traffic in the vicinity of SXSW, too difficult to stage an exit. My bet is that the person or person(s) engaged in these attacks is interested principally in locations with relatively predictable traffic patterns and proximate to freeways as escape tributaries.

Incidents qualify as terrorist attacks if the motive is to create social or political changes. It is unclear whether the Austin bomber or bombers have any social or political agenda. The bomber or bombers may simply enjoy killing or injuring people.

This where the FBI's expertise is needed to solve these acts of terrorism. The president should encourage the Bureau to do whatever is necessary to apprehend the people responsible for these crimes instead of picking fights with the agency. The president's message should be to show that he has faith in the FBI's ability to track down criminals to keep American citizens safe instead of demeaning their ability to fight crime and domestic terrorism.

Folks like this pump themselves up into thinking that they will be able to curtail the long march of history by their nefarious doings. They won't. Not a lick. What they should do is use their tremendous bomb making abilities and set a real clever trap for themselves in the backyard or house and save us all from having to learn in passing of their meaningless lives.