Police are investigating whether deadly package bombings in Austin were racially motivated

Handout via Austin Fire Department

The crime scene on Monday

• Police in Austin, Texas are investigating whether successive bomb attacks in the city this month were hate crimes.
• Both explosions took place at homes owned by African-Americans.
• So far, two people have been killed and two remain injured.

Police are reportedly looking into whether the bombs that went off at homes owned by African-Americans this month were racially motivated.

Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said the attacks were connected, and the motive may have been tied to race.

"So we cannot rule out that hate crime is at the core of this; but we're not saying that that's the cause as well," Manley said at a press conference Monday.

The most recent explosion on Monday happened inside of a home near the Windsor Park neighborhood and killed a 17-year-old boy and badly wounded a woman who is expected to survive.

The previous explosion happened on March 2, and killed another male, 39-year-old Anthony Stephan House, Time reported.

Neither package was delivered by any mail service, according to CNN, and were left on the homes' doorstep overnight, according to Time.

The homes were reportedly 12 miles apart, according to Time.

Google Maps

The second Austin package bomb went off at a residence in the Windsor Park neighborhood, about 5 miles from where the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference was happening.

Shortly after the news conference ended, police were called to investigate another explosion in a different part of east Austin. Authorities haven't said whether that explosion was also caused by a bomb.

Austin-Travis County EMS tweeted that the later blast left a woman in her 70s with potentially life-threatening injuries, and that a second woman in her 80s was being treated for an unrelated medical issue. Authorities haven't said whether the injured woman is also black.

The recent explosions occurred during the South by Southwest festival, which attracts hundreds of thousands of people every year and is taking place in the city.