The 24-year-old man suspected of carrying out a series of bombings in Austin, Texas, previously wrote online that he was opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage.

Mark Conditt killed himself in the early hours of Wednesday morning after law enforcement tracked him to a hotel in Round Rock, located in suburban Austin. Conditt attempted to flee but drove into a ditch and detonated a bomb, killing himself and leaving a pursuing officer with minor injuries. Law enforcement sources believed that he was intent on continuing his bombing spree, which has left two people dead and several others injured.

In the wake of his death, more details about Conditt are beginning to come to light. For instance, online posts from 2012, when Conditt was 17 years old, detail some of the suspect’s political views.


The Statesman reported that, in a series of blog posts written for a U.S. Government class at Austin Community College, Conditt had written that he was a conservative against same-sex marriage and abortion and in favor of the death penalty.

“First, if a women does not want a baby, or is incapable of taking care of one, she should not participate in activities that were made for that reason,” he wrote. “Second, if we are going to give women free abortions, why not give men free condoms, or the like? Is it not up to the couple to take these preventive measures?”

Conditt also said that homosexuality was not “natural.” “It is not natural to couple male with male and female with female,” he said. “It would be like trying to fit two screws together and to nuts together and then say, “See, it’s natural for them to go together.”

The bombing spree that has gripped Austin began on March 2, when 39-year-old Anthony Stephan House was killed by a package bomb left on his doorstep. A week later, 17-year-old Draylen Mason was killed when a package he carried inside detonated, injuring another woman as well. A separate bomb injured 75-year-old Esperanza Herrera.

The first three bombings occurred in eastern Austin, a historically lower-income area home to many communities of color, which sparked fears that an individual was targeting people of color in the area.


On Sunday night, two white men were injured by yet another package bomb left on the side of the road, which police described as a more “sophisticated” device. Then, on Tuesday morning, another bomb exploded at a FedEx distribution center near San Antonio. Police said that the package appeared to have been en route to the Austin area.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.