Last Updated Mar 21, 2018 10:45 AM EDT
ROUND ROCK, Texas — The suspect in the spate of bombings in Austin, Texas is dead, Austin police say. Police Chief Brian Manley told reporters early Wednesday white male detonated a device in his vehicle after being pursued by police early Wednesday morning.
Two law enforcement sources identified the suspect to CBS News as 23-year-old Mark Anthony Conditt.
Manley said the suspect’s identify wouldn’t be officially released until the medical examiner confirmed it and his next of kin are notified. Manley said authorities don’t know why the man engaged in the bombings.
The mayor of the suspected Austin bomber’s hometown says the suspect lived only two blocks away from him in a part of the city known as Old Town.
Pflugerville Mayor Victor Gonzales told The Associated Press on Wednesday that police had surveillance on the home overnight Tuesday, though he said he didn’t personally know the family.
Gonzales says he had concerned neighbors approaching him because of the large police presence in the neighborhood. He says he let them know everything would be OK.
Authorities say the suspect blew himself up overnight in his vehicle in a hotel parking lot in another suburb as a SWAT team closed in on him.
Investigators believe Conditt made all of the bombs used in the four Austin attacks, which killed two people and injured four others.
Conditt was a student at Austin Community College from 2010-2012 but didn’t graduate, a school spokesman told CBS News. He has not attended since that time. The school says it is working with the Austin Police Department.
According to the Austin-American Statesman, Conditt was home-schooled as a child and had previously worked as a computer repair technician.
Earlier, CBS affiliate KEYE said it had obtained photos of the person investigators believe dropped off two suspicious packages Sunday. Investigators said he was a person of interest and that the two packages were connected to the string of explosions in the Texas capital.
The station said sources told it the U.S. Marshal’s Lone Star Fugitive Task Force – Austin Division – gathered the video and helped the lead agencies in the investigation get an idea where the person of interest might have been.
KEYE sources said the pictures were from surveillance video taken inside a South Austin FedEx Office store, where the person shipped the two packages. One of the two packages exploded on a conveyor belt at a FedEx sorting facility outside San Antonio, in Schertz. The second package was intercepted at a facility near the Austin airport.
The second suspicious package was being treated as if it could be a bomb, according to Congressman Lloyd Doggett’s office. Both packages originated from the same location.
The photos show the person, possibly wearing a wig and gloves, carrying two packages. According to time stamps on the pictures, the person was in the store around 7:30 Sunday evening.
Authorities believe the same person or persons were connected to the two packages that surfaced Tuesday and were also responsible for the four other explosions that began on March 2nd that killed two people and injured six.
A sixth unrelated explosion was reported Tuesday evening in South Austin, but Austin Police said it was from military memorabilia left at a Goodwill drop box.
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