Police in Austin are investigating the possibility of a hate crime in the bombing that killed a 17-year-old and injured a woman in her 40’s, both African American, in the Texas city today.
Multiple #ATCEMS @Austin_Police @AustinFireInfo onscene of a reported explosion at 4800 block of Oldfort Hill Dr (06:44); 2 pts identified thus far with Medics obtaining DOS pronouncement of late teens Male & ~40's F txpt'd to DSMC w/serious potentially life threat inj's. MTF…
— ATCEMS (@ATCEMS) March 12, 2018
An explosion took place after the teen brought a package that had been left on the porch of his home inside the house, according to The Austin Statesman. Authorities are warning local residents to not handle any suspicious packages that they come across.
The U.S. Postal Service has said that they did not deliver the deadly package which was most likely left on the doorstep by the perpetrator.
This is the second bombing in the Austin area during the past two weeks, and police are calling the two attacks related because of their similarity. They are currently conducting further investigations into the explosive materials used in the bombs to determine if they match.
The previous explosion took place in Northeast Austin and killed 39-year-old Anthony Stephan House, also an African American man, in a similar fashion.
With two potentially racially-motivated bombings taking place in such a short period of time, some Austin residents fear that one or more white supremacists have decided to revive a practice employed in the Jim Crow South, most notoriously in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama which killed four young girls and injured 22 others.
The proliferation of white supremacist and neo-Nazi violence since the election of Donald Trump is evidence of the sense of liberation from what had been widely accepted social norms that formerly closeted racists now feel with a like-minded president in the White House.
Incidents like today’s Austin bombing demonstrate how dangerous the country has become under a fear-mongering president who continues to drive the division and hatred of his most deplorable followers out into the open.
