Investigators said yesterday's bombings are probably connected, and they are looking into whether race was a factor because all of the victims were minorities.
The attacks unfolded just as the Texas capital was swelling with visitors to the South By Southwest music festival.
The first of yesterday's attacks killed a 17-year-old boy and wounded a 40-year-old woman, both of them black. As Police Chief Brian Manley held a news conference to discuss that blast, authorities were called to the scene of another explosion that injured a 75-year-old Hispanic woman. She was taken to a hospital with potentially life-threatening wounds.
The police chief first suggested that the blasts could constitute a hate crime after yesterday's first bombing. Following the second explosion hours later, he said authorities had not settled on a motive and could not rule anything out.
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The explosions happened far from the main events of the huge festival, which brings about 400,000 visitors to Austin each year.
In a tweet, organizers said, "SXSW is heartbroken by the explosions in Austin," and they urged visitors to stay safe and alert police if they see any suspicious activity.
The three explosions occurred in different parts of east Austin. Yesterday's first explosion happened at a home in a neighborhood known as Springdale Hills and about 20 kilometers from the home where the March 2 package bomb killed 39-year-old Anthony Stephan House.
His death was initially investigated as suspicious but is now viewed as a homicide.
Yesterday's second explosion happened in the Montopolis neighborhood, near the airport and about 5 miles south of the day's first blast.
Neither the Postal Service nor private carriers such as UPS or FedEx have any record of delivering the package to the home where yesterday's explosion occurred.
"There are similarities that we cannot rule out that these two items are, in fact, related," Manley said.
Investigators said it was possible that the victims were targeted because of their race.
"We don't know what the motive behind these may be," Manley said. "We do know that both of the homes that were the recipients of these packages belong to African-Americans, so we cannot rule out that hate crime is at the core of this."
A second package was discovered near the site of the initial yesterday's explosion and that some residents and media members were evacuated or pushed farther from the blast site as authorities determined whether it was a bomb, Manley said.
None of the latest victims' names were immediately released.
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