World Austin police respond to another explosion, hours after plea to bomber

Eliza May said she was watching a TV show in her home when she heard an explosion in her backyard. “It sounded like when the transformers go out, but it was five times magnified that,” said May, who lives about 200 feet from where the explosion was said to have occurred.

Another neighbor, Lori Goodgame, said the explosion caused her house to shake. Her first thought was that lightning had hit her home. “There was a huge boom,” Goodgame said.

Moments later, dozens of police cars, ambulances and fire trucks swarmed her street, she said. Police officers ordered neighbors — who had come outside to see what happened — to return to their homes, she said.

Investigators from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also responded to the neighborhood known as Travis Country, which is about 5 miles southwest of downtown Austin and in a different part of Austin than the two previous explosions. Bomb technicians with the ATF were conducting a secondary sweep of the area, officials said.

The Austin police chief, Brian Manley, said the police were asking residents in a half-mile radius around the site of the explosion to stay indoors until officers could check the area for other bombs. He noted that officers were inspecting a backpack found near where the men were injured.

Because the device exploded after nightfall Sunday, the chief said the police could not fully inspect the scene and would have to wait until sunrise Monday to better examine it.

“We have not had an opportunity to really look at this blast site to determine what has happened,” Manley said at a news conference Sunday night. “It’s obvious that there’s been an explosion, and it’s obvious it’s caused significant injuries to two people.”

At a news conference before Sunday’s explosion, the Austin police made a rare public appeal for the bomber or bombers responsible for the three earlier explosions to contact the police so officials could learn more about the “message” behind the attacks.

“These events in Austin have garnered worldwide attention, and we assure you that we are listening,” Manley said in addressing the unknown bomber or bombers at a news conference Sunday. “We want to understand what brought you to this point, and we want to listen to you.”

Manley told reporters that he hoped the person or people responsible were watching, and that they would get in touch by calling 911 or reaching out online. He said investigators had not established a motive for the explosive packages.

“There’s the message behind what’s happening in our community, and we’re not going to understand that until the suspect or suspects reaches out to us to talk to us about what that message was,” Manley said. “We still do not know what ideology may be behind this and what the motive was behind this.”

Before Sunday, three bombings this month in the eastern and northeastern parts of the city have left two people dead and a third seriously wounded. In each case, the victims handled packages that were left on their doorsteps and were outfitted with homemade but sophisticated explosive devices.

Officials said the first bombing on March 2, on Haverford Drive, and two more on March 12, on Oldfort Hill Drive and Galindo Street, were connected. None of the packages were mailed. Instead, they were apparently placed directly near the doors of homes for the victims to find. In two cases, the bombs detonated when the victims picked them up; in the third, the package exploded after it had been carried inside and opened.

More than 500 federal agents are assisting the investigation from agencies including the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Fred Milanowski, the ATF special agent in charge of its Houston division, said he believed the same person built all three devices.

“Every bomber that makes these leaves a signature,” Milanowski said. “Obviously, once they find something successful for them, they don’t want to deviate from that because they don’t want something to blow up on them.”

Milanowski said a degree of skill was required to assemble, transport and deliver the devices without an accidental explosion. He declined to identify the materials that were used to make them.

“It wouldn’t be a typical household that would have all these components, but I would say that all the components are commercially available,” he said.

Since March 12, the day when two bombings occurred, anxious residents have reported hundreds of suspicious packages to the authorities; Austin police officers have responded to 735 such calls. Officials have continued to urge residents to call 911 if they receive a package that they were not expecting and that did not appear to have been delivered by the Postal Service or a legitimate commercial service like UPS or FedEx.

Law enforcement officials said they were looking for possible links to similar residential package bombings across the country.

“The scope goes beyond just Austin,” said a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation. “We’re looking for anyone that could have been involved in making bombs in the past in Texas, and really anywhere in the United States.”

Asked at the news conference whether investigators were looking for links to bombings elsewhere, Manley said they were pursuing all avenues. “We are not going to rule anything out until we have a reason to rule it out,” he said, “because when we do that, it narrows our focus and we may limit considering things that we should be considering.”

Over the past 30 years or so, package bombings have killed or wounded more than two dozen people across the country, excluding those connected to the Unabomber case. Many of the attacks have been solved by the authorities; they often stemmed from domestic disputes, and sometimes involved pipe bombs in packages wrapped like holiday presents.

The bombings in Austin have alarmed black leaders because the two people killed were African-American and the seriously wounded victim was a 75-year-old Hispanic woman. Law enforcement officials said they did not have conclusive evidence that race played a role in the bombings, but they were continuing to explore the possibility.

Investigators are examining connections between the two black victims, who both belonged to prominent African-American families. Officials said investigators were also looking into the possibility that the bomb that wounded the Hispanic woman may have been intended for someone else, but nothing definitive had been established.

Manley said Sunday that the combined rewards offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case had been increased to $115,000 from $65,000.

A concert featuring the Roots that was part of the South by Southwest festival in Austin was canceled Saturday after the concert venue received a bomb threat in an email, the authorities said. No device was found, and the police later arrested a man on a charge of making a terroristic threat. The police said the man, Trevor Weldon Ingram, 26, was not a suspect in the package bombings.

Austin police respond to another explosion, hours after plea to bomber

A short time after the authorities said they received reports of an explosion, two men in their 20s were taken to a hospital with serious injuries, the Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Service said.

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