Austin Police Update Explosive Packages Probe, ID Dead Teen

AUSTIN, TX — In a Tuesday update to the series of Austin package explosions that have claimed two lives and injured others, law enforcement officials said more than 260 reports of suspicious packages have been reported after the bombings, identified the teen victim from Monday and upped the reward by $50,000 for information leading to an arrest.

Since the first package explosion on March 2 and the two others on Monday, the Austin Police Department has received 265 suspicious package calls between 8 a.m. Monday and 3:09 p.m. on Tuesday. All the reported packages were ultimately deemed benign, but police said they were gratified the public has taken heed of their previous advice to report anything suspicious.

"This significant call load is a positive sign that people are heeding advice to speak up if they believe something is suspicious," police said in a statement. "We encourage everyone to remain vigilant and to avoid opening unexpected packages that they believe are suspicious. We also encourage the public to break down and properly dispose of safely-opened packages. The same with discarded pizza boxes. This will help assist with some of the suspicious package calls we are receiving and allow us to continue responding to other calls for service."

At an afternoon press briefing, Austin Interim Police Chief Brian Manley expounded on the level of calls while encouraging residents to continue their vigilance. He also announced a reward for information leading up to an arrest totaling $50,000. The reward money comes on the heels of a $15,000 reward offered by the governor's office.

Manley also acknowledged during the press briefing that police mistakenly believed the first bombing on March 2 along the 1100 block of Haverford was an isolated incident, explaining why a wider notice wasn't issued then to guard against package bombings. Manley said local police investigators thought that first bombing was retaliation for an earlier drug bust but believed the attacker must've targeted the wrong house.

There were close similarities related to the house that was the target of a police drug bust and vehicles involved, and police figured the attacker must've gotten the wrong house. The attacker, they believed, intended to target a drug dealer who lived nearby.

"What we had was a singular event that had taken place in this community that was very unqiue," Manley explained. "We had no information to believe that it was related to a larger plan at that time, and, in fact, our working theory that day involved an operation we had conducted earlier that week involving a raid in a home on the same street where we took a significant amount of cash from a drug stash house," Manley said.

"That house looks very similar in color, and the vehicles were very similar as well, and we believed this may have actually been a retaliatory attack for the raid we did on that house and that they simply got the wrong house," Manley continued. "That was our initial theory."

They were wrong. The victim, Anthony Stephan House, 39, was not in any way connected to that working theory, the chief acknowledged. House, an African American married father of an eight-year-old was previously identified as the first victim of an exploding package in the northern part of the city.

By Monday, the two additional package explosions — in close succession to each other —alerted police and everyone else the original bombing was no isolated incident, and the attacks were related.

Manley identified the teenager who was killed Monday as Draylen Mason, 17.

"From everything I've heard about Mason, he was was an outstanding young man who was going places with his life, and it's an absolute tragedy he is no longer with us," Manley said.

Mason's mother, a woman in her 40s who continues to recover from her injuries, was not identified. Manley reported that a 75-year-old Hispanic woman injured in a separate blast yesterday, is still hospitalized in critical condition with life-threatening injuries.

Manley was joined at the press briefing by FBI special agent Chris Combs and an official with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to further convey the message that the case was being worked on aggressively. Both representatives said they have sent teams from their national headquarters to assist in the investigation, including behavioral profilers and other analysts. Manley said the Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Postal Service also were involved in the investigation.

"First I'd like to say to the people of Austin: You should have great faith in the Austin Police Department," Combs said. "The FBI is joining the investigation obviously by the seriousness we saw yesterday."

Combs said teams from FBI headquarters in Quantico, Va., have been dispatched to Austin to help solve the case: "We have brought many of our national assets to Austin to assist in this," he said, referencing behavioral profilers, evidence teams and bomb technicians. "We want the people of Austin to know that the full resources of the FBI are being brought to bear to help on this, and we will continue to work with our partners until we get to resolution. We will be here with the chief and Austin Police Department until we resolve this and make sure there are no more explosive devices in the city."

Police subsequently released a graphic alerting residents to red flags they should consider before opening an unexpected package:

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