Posted on 03/21/18
| News Source: Daily Mail
The Austin bomber has been shot dead as police FBI agents were trying to arrest him, it has been reported.
The man detonated a device before gunfire rang out along Interstate Highway 35 in the early hours of Wednesday, according to KVUE.
The FBI and police tracked the bomber to the Round Rock area using cell phone technology, security video, store receipts before 'engaging him' around 3am on Wednesday, the station reports.
As officers pursued the suspect a device was detonated, which had been anticipated by police, before a volley of gunfire.
The shooting comes just hours after CBS published CCTV showing the bombing suspect at a Fed-Ex office in the south of the city.
The images show a man, possibly wearing a wig and gloves, delivering two packages to the store around 7.30pm on Sunday.
One of the packages subsequently exploded on a conveyor belt at a FedEx sorting facility outside of San Antonio in Schertz.
The other was intercepted at a facility near Austin airport and was later confirmed to contain a bomb.
Authorities believe the same person is connected to the two packages that surfaced Tuesday is also responsible for the four other explosions that began on March 2nd, killing two people and injuring six.
Austin Police Department tweeted that they were working on an officer-involved shooting near the highway, but gave no further details.
The I-35 has been closed in both directions while images from the scene show dozens of law enforcement vehicles parked along the highway.
The first incident occurred on March 2 when a package bomb exploded at a northeast Austin home, killing a 39-year-old Anthony Stephan House.
Two more package bombs then exploded further south on March 12. Draylen Mason, 17, was killed and his mother was wounded after they opened a package in their kitchen.
A 75-year-old Hispanic woman named by family as Esperanza Herrera was severely injured when a package bomb exploded at her home a few hours later.
The trip wire explosion on Sunday came just hours after police made an unusual direct appeal to whomever was responsible for three package bombs that killed two in the past month.