A string of unsolved bombings in Texas this month that has left two dead and others critically injured was “meant to send a message,” though Austin Police Chief Brian Manley didn’t say what that message was during a Sunday news conference.
Manley said that he hoped the bomber was watching and would “reach out to us before anyone else is injured or killed.”
Late Sunday, Austin police were investigating an explosion in a neighborhood in the southwestern part of the city. Authorities said that two men in their 20s suffered non-life-threatening injuries and that they were still examining a suspicious backpack in the area.
The nature of the explosion wasn’t immediately clear, and there was no immediate indication that it was connected to the package bombings that killed Stephen House and Draylen Mason. Both men were African-American members of the same church, Nelson Linder, the local NAACP chapter president, told NBC News last week.