The top local stories this morning from KERA News: Hundreds of local, state and federal law enforcement officials are investigating a fifth package explosion in Texas — this one earlier this morning at a FedEx facility in Schertz, outside of San Antonio.
This follows a fourth explosion in Austin Sunday that injured two people.
Texas Standard investigative reporter Alain Stephens spoke with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on background about how the agency approaches these kind of investigations.
“The first thing that the ATF is going to do with any explosion is they're going to be concerned about secondary devices,” he said. “What would happen in these explosions is first responders would show up and then somewhere on scene a secondary device would go off and hurt the first responders.”
Officials also look for a ‘signature,’ which is the packaging and the trade craft a bomber may use to make explosive devices. Typically, the initial explosion may not be the first time a bomber has detonated a device.
“One of the things that law enforcement is going to be doing is looking for possible test explosions in the area where a bomber may have created a device in preparation and gone out into the middle of nowhere and tested it,” Stephens said.
Authorities say a serial bomber's likely to blame for the four explosions in Austin and likely linked to the latest explosion outside San Antonio.
Other stories this morning:
- “Affluenza" teen Ethan Couch will get out of jail soon.
- The Richardson school district will roll out a plan to improve four of its struggling elementary schools.
- Every year, Fidelity Investments helps education nonprofits make sense of big data used to track how effective they are.
You can listen to North Texas stories weekdays at 8:23 a.m. and 6:20 p.m. on KERA 90.1 FM.
