With the increases in on-line shopping, this approach at serial parcel bombs is much more consequential than years past.  Two explosions in Austin Texas today as parcel bombs were left on the doorsteps of the victims.  One teenager was killed, two women seriously injured.

TEXAS – A teenager was killed and at least two women were seriously hurt after a pair of explosions rocked homes in Austin on Monday — just two weeks after a separate blast which authorities said is believed to be linked to both of Monday’s incidents.

Austin Police said they received a call about the first explosion in a neighborhood on the northeast side of the city around 6:45 a.m., after the 17-year-old resident found a package on the front step, brought it inside, and opened it in the kitchen where it exploded.

“It is very similar to the incident that occurred in Austin on March 2,” Austin Police Chief Brian Manley told reporters.

The police chief said at a later news conference Monday that the department started receiving multiple calls at 11:50 a.m. regarding another explosion, in the Montopolis neighborhood, located southeast of downtown Austin.

A 75-year-old Hispanic woman, Manley said, also opened a package that she found outside her home, which detonated. The woman was “significantly injured” during the explosion and was taken to the hospital with potentially life-threatening injuries.

Manley said authorities don’t believe the packages came from a delivery through the U.S. Postal Service or private mail carriers, and the placement on the home’s front doorstep also indicated a similarity to the blast earlier this month. Federal law enforcement officials told Fox News the packages are made to look like mail, but at least the first one did not actually get shipped from the postal service.

“There are similarities that we cannot rule out that these two items are, in fact, related,” Manley said.

The Austin-Travis County EMS tweeted that a teenage male was killed and a woman in her 40s was taken to the hospital. Manley said she had non-life-threatening injuries. (read more)

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