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Silence deafening as mail-bombs kill two in Texas
Friday 16th March 2018 | Jake
A series of home-made bombs have killed civilians in Austin, Texas. The attacks have been met with silence from Donald Trump and important questions remain unanswered, and in some cases, not even asked.
Anthony Stephan House leaves behind an eight-year-old daughter and a wife. He leaves behind the homeowners association he was president of; a graduate of Texas State University, he also leaves a career as president of House Capital Management LLC (although investigative reporter Tony Plohetski found that the company had recently been sold to a private investment group). It wasn’t his intention to leave.
On the 2nd of March, a package was delivered to his house, when he went to inspect it, it exploded and he was killed by the shrapnel from the bomb. House was the first victim of a wave of mail bombs that police have belatedly acknowledged may be connected. Incredibly, their initial theory was that House had built the package bomb himself, and had also planted the package outside his front door. In their words, there was “no continuing threat to the community.”
They were wrong. Ten days after this incident, on Monday the 12th, a further two bombs exploded in Austin. The first went off in the morning, it was brought into the family kitchen, where it killed 17-year-old Draylen Mason, Mason had recently been accepted into a number of renowned music scholarships across the US, the blast also left his mother in the hospital.
Just a few hours after this second bomb 75-year-old Esperanza Herrera was put into a critical condition after a package exploded, it is believed Herrera was not the intended target and picked up the package by mistake.
All the victims were either Black or Latin American. Authorities have now drawn a link between the targets: they are all attendees of a black church congregation.
Trump's response has been non-existent
So what of the official response? The police now believe the incidents are related and that due to the victims’ race it may be a hate crime. But rather than condemn a series of fatal bombings that may be terrorist, Trump and many senior political figures couldn’t even acknowledge them.
So why the silence? As Shaun King notes for The Intercept, “If the victims were white and the suspects were known to be Muslims, the president of the United States would care.”
