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Austin, Texas (CNN) Austin police just confirmed what residents have feared for weeks -- a suspected serial bomber is attacking their city.
For the fourth time this month, a device exploded on Austin residents. What makes Sunday night's blast especially terrifying is that the device was left on the side of a residential road and triggered by a tripwire, police said Monday.
Investigators have found similarities between that device and three previous bombs, which were stuffed inside packages and left on residents' doorsteps, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said.
"We are clearly dealing with what we expect to be a serial bomber at this point," he said.
The latest device -- which was triggered by a tripwire -- shows "a higher level of sophistication, a higher level of skill," he said.
And unlike the victims of the previous blasts, the two men wounded in Sunday's explosion are white, Austin police said. Both men are expected to recover.
Latest developments
Police departments in Houston and San Antonio are sending bomb technicians and canine teams to Austin to help in the investigation, their police chiefs said Monday.
President Donald Trump has been briefed on the Austin bombings, a White House spokesman said Monday, adding the White House pledges its support to local law enforcement.
Three members of the Congressional Black Caucus called Monday for federal officials to classify the bombings as terrorist attacks and determine whether they are "ideologically or racially motivated."
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced more than $265,000 in emergency funding for police to purchase seven portable X-ray systems for use in detecting bombs and investigating suspicious packages.
The Travis Country neighborhood of Austin was on lockdown Monday, Manley said, as authorities investigate the pieces of evidence strewn across a wide area.
Manley asked anyone in the neighborhood with security camera footage to call police.
The Austin public school district says it couldn't send buses to the affected neighborhood Monday because of police activity.
An indiscriminate wake-up call
Many minority residents in Austin have been on edge since the bombings started, as the first three bombings killed or wounded minorities.
Several residents under lockdown Monday said they were stunned the latest attack happened in their neighborhood.
Unlike the first three bombings, which happened in east Austin, the latest attack happened in a predominantly white part of town.
Eliza May said because the first three bombings happening on the east side of the city, in predominantly minority areas, she hadn't been following the news closely.
May said that as a resident of the affluent Travis Country neighborhood , she assumed she had nothing to worry about.
"We feel safe. This isn't something that you'd expect around here," May said.
Now, "it's obvious that you have to be alert."
"This was a random bomb," she said. "This could have been any one of us."
Neighbor Shonda Mace said the bombing "is going to be (a) life-changing event for our neighborhood."
"I'm scared about what's going to happen next," she said.
Tripwire could give clues
"The use of a tripwire is far less discriminating than leaving parcel bombs at residences and suggests that the latest victims were not specifically targeted," the global think tank Stratfor Threat Lens said.
"The device's success, despite significantly different design, further suggests that the bomb maker behind these attacks is an accomplished one, and has likely to have received some training, perhaps as a military or police explosive ordnance disposal technician."
"As the bomb maker changes up design and geography, all residents of Austin and surrounding areas should avoid suspicious items," Stratfor Threat Lens said.
'Extra level of vigilance' needed
The latest blast came less than a week after police said the three previous explosions -- in a span of 10 days -- were connected. Those blasts killed a man and a teenager, and wounded two others.
Police are working under the belief that the explosions are related. Manley said they'll get a better idea with a post-blast analysis and examination of the device components.
In the meantime, Manley told residents not to touch or go near anything that looks suspicious.
"We now need the community to have an extra level of vigilance and pay attention to any suspicious device -- whether it be a package or a bag, a backpack -- anything that looks out of place," Manley said Monday. "Do not approach items like that."
APD is asking the public to remain vigilant and report anything suspicious. If you come across ANYTHING that looks suspicious, DO NOT touch, handle or disturb it. Keep a safe distance and call 9-1-1 immediately. pic.twitter.com/buJsLqeRy5 — Austin Police Dept (@Austin_Police) March 19, 2018
More resources for police
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced the release of $265,500 in emergency funding Monday for the Austin Police Department and the Texas Ranger Response Team to purchase seven portable X-ray systems.
The systems can be used at the scene and provide "clear visual evidence for rapid assessment of a package's safety," the governor's office said.
"I want to ensure everyone in the Austin region and the entire state that Texas is committed to providing every resource necessary to make sure these crimes are solved as quickly as possible," Abbott said in a statement.
Other Texas law enforcement agencies are contributing resources as well.
The Houston police department said Monday it's sending several teams to Austin to help with the investigation. They include bomb technicians, an explosive ordnance disposal team, and an explosives-trained dog and handler, Chief Art Acevedo said Monday.
"We stand with the Austin Police Department," Acevedo said.
The San Antonio Police Department dispatched two bomb technicians and a bomb dog to Austin on Monday morning, Police Chief William McManus said.
Shortly before the fourth bombing, the reward for information leading to the arrest of anyone responsible for the three blasts increased to a total of $115,000, authorities said.
Officials have urged residents to call police with any tips they may have, even if the information seems to be "inconsequential."
More than 500 officers and agents have been called in to assist with the investigation, including F.B.I. profiling experts from Quantico, Va., who were trying to build a profile of a possible perpetrator, said Christopher Combs, special agent in charge of the bureau’s San Antonio office.
“We don’t know why the bomber is doing this. We don’t know his reasons,” said Mr. Combs, adding that the authorities were especially hoping to understand why whoever was behind the bombings was wielding “this level of violence.”
“We would really like the bomber to contact us so we can talk to him,” he said.
So far, the police have been alerted to more than 600 packages deemed suspicious, as residents have phoned and emailed friends and family to verify the provenance of parcels before opening them.
Chief Manley signaled that the authorities could be getting closer to labeling the attacks as domestic terrorism. “We will have to determine if we see a specific ideology behind this, or something that will lead us along with our federal partners to make that decision,” he said.
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He said the fourth bombing demonstrated a higher level of sophistication than the previous three, as well as a “significant change” in the way the victims were targeted.
In the first three bombings, cardboard boxes were discovered outside homes, seeming to target specific individuals. The packages were not delivered by the Postal Service or any other package delivery company, but instead appeared to have been left outside overnight. They detonated when they were handled by the people who discovered them.
The fourth bomb, however, which exploded on Sunday, was left on a roadside, and was believed to have been detonated with the use of a tripwire by two random passers-by, Chief Manley said. He warned residents that a future bomb could also be connected to a tripwire, which can be fashioned from hard-to-see materials such as fishing line or filament.
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“We have a high degree of confidence that the same individual built all these devices,” Fred Milanowski, special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Houston, told reporters.
He declined to discuss details of the latest bomb’s construction, but described the way that tripwire explosive devices are assembled.
“In general, the tripwire is going to be attached to a switch, and it’s going to be anchored down on the other side, obviously, so that when somebody actually trips on it, they will activate that switch,” he said. “That’s why we call it a victim-activated device. It’s random. It’s not targeted. The randomness that a child could have come across that is very concerning to us.”
With so little known about who is behind the attacks and whether they will continue, the city is on edge, with many residents appearing unsure of whether to proceed with normal life or stay in hiding.
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“I think everyone in Austin is in the process of trying to figure out exactly how nervous to be,” said Stephen Harrigan, an author and essayist who has lived in Austin for more than 50 years and whose home is about eight miles from the scene of Sunday’s explosion.
“Are these bombings targeted acts of murder with a specific motive behind them — which is horrible enough — or do they represent something broader and more random?” he said.
Thad Holt, 76, who lives in the gated condominium community of 5000 Mission Oaks a few miles from Sunday’s bomb site, said an occasional car break-in is the kind of crime most typical in the neighborhood.
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“It’s too close for comfort,” Mr. Holt said. “It sort of puts you on edge. It puts the whole town on edge.”
Richard Herrington, 75, a retired pharmacist who lives about a half-mile from the blast site, said he and his family had gone hiking Sunday afternoon near the street where the tripwire was set and went off later that evening.
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“My oldest granddaughter, age 7, said, ‘Grandpa, I want to walk on the street where there’s the most shade,’” Mr. Herrington said. “We could have very easily walked down that street because there is shade. We could have been on that street and maybe the tripwire was there already, I don’t know. I’m anxious for our community because we don’t know when and where it’s going to happen again. I feel like it will happen again.”
At about 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, Mr. Herrington said, he and his wife were watching an N.C.A.A. basketball game when the blast occurred. “I was in the military. Never in combat. If you’ve been in the military and you hear a mortar round go off, it has a thump. And that’s how I knew it was a bomb, because it was a distinctive thump like that.”
The four neighborhoods where the explosions have occurred are varied economic and demographic slices of Austin. The first three bomb scenes were in largely working- and middle-class sections of northeast and east Austin, with sizable black, Hispanic and Asian populations. Hammocks and baby swings hang from tree branches on front lawns near Haverford Drive, the site of the first bombing on March 2. The explosion on Sunday took place in Travis Country, an upscale planned community that is largely white. It is a hilly and wooded area near a patchwork of busy highways and parkways.
After the first three bombings, many community leaders and residents speculated that the attacks appeared to be hate crimes, because those injured were black and Hispanic.
The first package killed Anthony Stephan House, a 39-year-old black man, after he discovered it outside his home. The second targeted two more African-Americans — Draylen Mason, 17, who was killed, and his mother, who was critically injured after she brought the package inside from their front porch and opened it in the kitchen. The third left a 75-year-old Hispanic woman seriously injured.
The explosion Sunday, which injured two white men, suggested that the bomber or bombers were driven by something other than racial bias.
In Monday’s news conference, the authorities said they had received a large number of tips on who could be behind the attacks, but that so far, none had led to the identification of a suspect.
In news conferences, officials have begun to take the unusual step of appealing to the bomber or bombers directly.
“I will reach out to the suspect or suspects and ask that you contact us,” Chief Manley said. “There are innocent people getting hurt in this community and it needs to come to a stop.”
A deadly serial bomber has struck in Austin for what appears to be the fourth time this month, frightening residents and prompting police to put a neighbourhood in the Texan capital into lockdown.
After three packages exploded earlier in March, killing two people and seriously injuring another while baffling the authorities, the city’s police chief appealed on Sunday for the suspect or suspects to make contact.
But later that night another bomb seriously injured two more people, deepening the mystery – and the alarm.
The men, aged 22 and 23, were by the side of a road in a quiet residential area, known as Travis Country, about seven miles west of downtown just after 8.30pm on Sunday when, police said, they triggered a tripwire next to a fence. They were taken to hospital with significant injuries and were in stable condition on Monday morning.
The location and the detonation method are in marked contrast to the three previous incidents. Anthony House, 39, died on 2 March. Then 17-year-old Draylen Mason was killed on the morning of 12 March and his mother was hurt. About five hours later, Esperanza Herrera, 75, was seriously injured. All three picked up packages left on their doorsteps that exploded; the package that killed the teenager detonated in his kitchen.
Police had begun exploring possible connections between the victims. The two who died were African American and their families know each other, raising suspicions of a racial motive.
The attacks took place in the east of a city in which the Interstate 35 freeway that runs through downtown has historically acted as a dividing line between predominantly white areas to the west and mainly black and Hispanic neighbourhoods on the other side.
Sunday’s victims, though, are white; the neighbourhood is to the west, 10 miles from the previous attack; and the use of a tripwire in a public street suggests a perpetrator aiming for random targets.
“We are clearly dealing with what we expect to be a serial bomber at this point,” Brian Manley, the police chief, told reporters on Monday.
The latest explosion raises the fear that simply walking outside – particularly in the dark when a thin tripwire will be almost impossible to spot – could prove fatal. Police have appealed for residents to provide footage from home surveillance, such as doorbell cameras. Rewards for information worth $115,000 have been offered.
Austin welcomed thousands of visitors last week for the annual South by Southwest festival. A man was arrested on Saturday for an emailed bomb threat that prompted the cancellation of a concert by the Roots, but police said the suspect was not linked to the explosions.
The Travis Country neighborhood was cordoned off by police and residents were told to stay indoors.
“We were not willing to classify this as terrorism, as hate, because we just don’t know enough. And what we have seen now is a significant change from what appeared to be three very targeted attacks to what was last night a target that would have hit a random victim that happened to walk by,” Manley said.
However, the NAACP, the civil rights organization, on Monday called the bombings acts of domestic terrorism.
Police were guarding the main entrance to the subdivision in Travis Country on Monday afternoon, with FBI trucks parked behind yellow crime scene tape. One local, who gave his name as Joe said: “This morning when I left the house I was even afraid to open the door, thinking there might be a wire there.”
“We heard it at home. From a block and a half away it sounded very loud. it sounded like it was two [bangs] as the sound travelled.”
The incident took place in an affluent area where the city’s dense urban core gently gives way to gated communities where secluded mansions nestle in rolling hills and abundant greenery features hiking and biking trails.
“This is a family neighbourhood,” Joe said. “I can guarantee you it’s affecting the whole community … I have a 13-year-old and I have to worry about him, how it’s going to affect him.”
