March 21, 2018

Current Event 3/21

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/03/21/who-mark-anthony-conditt-austin-serial-bomber/444738002/

This article written by John Bacon and John C Moritz of USA Today discusses the search of the now dead month long bomber in Austin, Texas. After 3 weeks the suspect was found Wednesday morning of March 21st and identified as Mark Anthony Conditt. The bomber blew himself up as law enforcement carefully approached his car after they followed him from a roadside hotel. This serial bomber lived just 20 miles away from Austin in Pflugerville where many neighbors and nearby workers were shocked to know that their quiet community would be a crime scene. Authorities used surveillance video from FedEx store in South Austin to lead them to the suspect. They were able to lead it all to packages due to the fact that the four explosive packages before resulted in 2 dead and 4 seriously injured people. The packages were a pattern so they focused on the next ones to stop and also checked Conditt's recent google searches of where the bomber was looking to ship packages. Police identified the victim late Tuesday night and determined the car he was driving in which they found at a hotel in Round Rock. A swat team was assembled and more firepower was on the way when the suspect attempted to flee. Conditt ran into a ditch moments before the police started to approach carefully and then an explosive went off resulting in his death. The agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said investigators believe all the bombs were built by the same person and Conditt was that person. Trump tweeted shortly after the suspect was found "AUSTIN BOMBING SUSPECT IS DEAD. Great job by law enforcement and all concerned!"

This article relates to AP Gov because we have seen a lot of this on CNN 10 in the morning and led it to other discussions. Such as when we talked this morning about men being the problem not woman because whether you agree with that or not this is yet another serious issue where a man was the key suspect. He may have had some mental issues also that we didn't know about like they are saying the percentages are rising in mental illnesses and suicides in men. We have had a lot of school shootings lately and discussed things in class so I think this is another problem we will be talking about for a while all over the world and I'm sure cases will come up following this incident when more information comes out.

My position on this issue is that it is absolutely absurd that these things are happening in the country we live in. It should not be able to happen and take people's lives or even go on for the course of three weeks. It's insane that lately all over America mass shootings, bombings and other crazy things are happening to make people fear for their life. Trumps tweet hit it on the spot that it was great work be law enforcement putting this to an end when it was hard to find ties to the suspect. They did all that they could even though we wish it had been sooner than taking more lives. Something needs to change in our country for the better and make the turn to stop all of this horrifying tragedies.