Two lives were cut short when explosive packages arrived on their doorsteps in Austin, Texas.
Anthony Stephan House was a senior project manager at Texas Quarries, a supplier of limestone from the state, according to his LinkedIn page.
Draylen Mason was a talented student and bass player accepted into the selective Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin, CNN affiliate KXAN reported.
Three package bombs were delivered to Austin homes over the course of 10 days, shaking residents and prompting hundreds of calls to police.
One of the explosive packages was brought indoors and yielded parts that could be reconstructed, according to a law enforcement source, who told CNN the same person may have constructed the three devices. The devices were essentially pipe bombs rigged to explode upon opening, the source said.
House, a 39-year-old African-American man, was killed after the first blast on March 2 on his front porch, according to police.
Another bombing early Monday killed Mason, 17, who is also African-American, and left his mother with injuries not considered life-threatening, police said.
Both House and the slain teenager are relatives of prominent members of Austin’s African-American community, The Washington Post reported.
House was the stepson of Freddie Dixon, a former pastor at a historic black church in Austin, according to the newspaper, and Dixon is friends with Mason’s grandfather.
The name of a 75-year-old Hispanic woman wounded in another incident Monday has not been released.
Anthony Stephan House
House’s LinkedIn profile said he had worked for Texas Quarries since 2016. During that time, he had participated in various commercial projects throughout the state, including at University of Texas properties and the Phillips 66 headquarters in Houston, his profile said.
Nelson Linder, Austin NAACP president, said he is friends with House’s stepfather, and that House once helped design the organization’s website.
House previously worked as a hedge fund and private equity investment manager, according to his LinkedIn page, which said he attended Texas State University-San Marcos.
Draylen Mason
Mason was the “most remarkable talent in a most remarkable youth orchestra program called Austin Sound Waves,” said Doug Dempster, dean of the College of Fine Arts at UT Austin, KXAN reported.
The Austin Sound Waves program offers free music instruction to artistically underserved children.
“At Sound Waves performances one could often see him leaning in to lead and coach younger and more tentative players,” Dempster told KXAN.
“His gentle confidence seemed to come from a conviction that hard work and talent was going to work for him. It did.”
“From everything I’ve heard about Draylen, he was an outstanding young man who was going places with his life, and it’s an absolute tragedy that he’s no longer with us,” Austin Police Chief Brian Manley told reporters.