Austin bomber suspect blows himself up after being confronted by police.

The main suspect in the Austin serial bombing has been confronted and blew himself when police cornered him. NBC News. The suspect has been named as Mark Anthony Conditt, a 24 year old. Conditt was tracked down by a SWAT team and was confronted by them. He then blew himself up and was shot by the police. The bombs killed two people and injured three more and involved placing packages near homes as well as one case using tripwire. Another bomb blew up in a FedEx store and that may have been how police tracked the suspect down as surveillance cameras showed someone dropping off the bombs. Even though the main suspect is dead, police advise the public to be on the lookout for other possible bombs. 

AUSTIN BOMBING SUSPECT IS DEAD. Great job by law enforcement and all concerned!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2018

Another picture of the suspect dropping the bombs off at the FedEx store. NBC News/Sinclair. 

My Comment:

Though I haven't been posting about this story on my blog I have been following it since it began. It is very rare these days to see a bomber like this that doesn't appear to be inspired by Islamic terrorism, though that can't be ruled out yet. Plus his main goal seemed to be causing chaos, not a huge bodycount. 

And cause chaos he did. The people of Austin must have been terrified knowing that there could be bombs placed by their doorsteps and tripwires on their sidewalks. It is a relief that the case appears to be closed and that the danger has mostly passed. However, there is still a chance that there are more bombs out there placed before the suspect was killed. 

We also have to consider that it is possible that there was an accomplice or two. That would be highly unusual but it's too soon to rule it out. I think we can rule out the police getting the wrong man though as the fact that he blew himself up after being confronted makes a strong argument that he was the bomber. The story might not be over yet, but I think the mastermind has been taken care off. 

The bomber made a critical mistake as it appears that using the FedEx store broke this case wide open. And even if it didn't it still was a massive screw up as the pictures and video taken there would have probably identified him sooner rather than later. If he had stuck to his tactics of placing bombs and/or tripwires he probably could have continued for quite some time. It would have taken hours of police work to chase down leads barring some very lucky eyewitness if he had just stuck with what he was doing.

Thankfully he was too smart for his own good. Normally switching up your tactics is a smart move for an attacker like this. People were taking defenses against unattended packages and probably tripwires as well. But sending the packages through the mail created a papertrail and caused his face to be caught on camera. Once he decided to do that it was the beginning of the end. Plus the tactic failed as the packages were never delivered because one of them blew up before it was delivered. 

Some people may have heard that someone on reddit claimed to be the bomber. I think that is fairly far fetched but still plausible. Still there was nothing to indicate that the poster really was the bomber so until someone says otherwise I consider that to be essentially nothing. I only mention it because I wanted to point out it hasn't been confirmed yet, as of this writing. And, if it is true, it just goes to show that the world is a strange place.

I fear that this attack was successful and covered enough that it may spawn copycats. Just as mass shootings tend to do the same and everyone realized that you could kill people with vehicles after the Nice attack, I think this may convince people that these package bombs are something that they can do too. The good news about that is explosives can be tricky and we may see a few more crazed or evil individuals blow themselves up accidentally. 

I was fairly surprised that the suspect was only 24 years old. A bomber strikes me as an older, more experienced individual, not someone in their mid twenties. It's not too extreme though and it's not like what he was doing was super difficult. It's more work than a mass shooting but not as much as you would think. 

I won't speculate too much on motive other than the fact that I doubt this is Islamic terrorism. It didn't have the "go for maximum casualties" signature that they have. What it could be besides that, I don't know. I don't want to speculate either since with so little known it would be easy to paint a picture using bias instead of facts. 

I am glad that this suspect was brought down so hard and so quickly. Unlike the Unibomber that ran rampant for years, this guy was tracked down in a few days. The police (and Feds) did well to stop him and it is nice to write another story about good police work after the debacle which was the Florida mass shooting. After yesterdays mass shooting stopped by a cop that's two good stories in a row, which is a good thing.