A profile on the man who terrorized Austin with mailed package bombs is starting to emerge. According to ABC News, Mark Anthony Conditt‘s family said they were stunned and “broken” after learning that he was the suspect in a string of bombings that killed two people and injured at least four others.
“We are devastated and broken at the news that our family member could be involved in such an awful way,” the family said in a statement.
“We had no idea of the darkness that Mark must have been in,” the statement continued. “Our family is a normal family in every way. We love, and we pray and, we try to inspire and serve others. Right now our prayers are for those families who have lost loved ones, for those impacted in any way, and for the soul of our Mark. We are grieving, and we are in shock. Please respect our privacy as we deal with this terrible, terrible knowledge and try to support each other at this time.”
As police closed in on him this morning, Conditt detonated one of his explosives, killing himself.
Speaking to ABC News, a family friend who asked to remain anonymous said that Conditt comes from a “normal Christian family.”
“There was nothing going on with Mark when I knew him, I knew him as a teenager,” the unidentified woman said. “He reminded me of every teenage boy, it was hard to get a smile out of him.”
From ABC News:
Austin Community College confirmed that Conditt attended classes at the school from 2010 to 2012.
He was a business administration major and took classes at two of the community college’s campuses, the school said in a statement.
Conditt did not graduate but “left the college in 2012 [in] good academic standing,” the school said.
The incidents associated with Conditt included three package bombs that detonated at residences in Austin, then an explosive triggered by a tripwire, a package bomb that went off at a FedEx distribution center about 65 miles southwest of Austin in Schertz, and finally a second package that was found intact at a different FedEx center.
Investigators are still trying to figure out a motive for the attacks.
