Early Friday morning, an explosive detonated inside an RV parked in downtown Nashville, blasting out the windows in neighboring buildings and reportedly shooting a huge fireball into the air. A recorded, automated voice warned people to vacate the area in the 15 minutes leading up to the bombing, and although at least three people sustained injuries, investigators do not currently believe whoever orchestrated the incident intended mass casualties. They have, however, pinpointed a person of interest as of Sunday morning: Anthony Quinn Warner, a 63-year-old Nashville resident with a background in IT, according to the Tennessean.
“Our investigative team is turning over every stone to make sure we know as many details as possible to answer the question of who is responsible for this, and also to understand, why did they do this?” FBI special agent Douglas Korneski, who heads the Memphis office, said Saturday, according to the New York Times.
Here’s everything we know about the Nashville explosion.
A countdown to the explosion advised residents to evacuate the area.
According to Nashville police, a white RV drove onto 2nd Avenue North around 1:22 a.m. on December 25, Christmas day. Police later found the vehicle parked outside an AT&T transmission building, after receiving reports of gunshots around 5:30 a.m. Resident Betsy Williams, who lives in a loft in the area, told CNN that “it sounded like an automatic weapon” going off at intervals, prompting her to call 911. When officers arrived, they reportedly found the RV broadcasting a message to “evacuate now,” because “this vehicle will explode in 15 minutes,” kicking off a countdown to the bomb’s detonation.
“When the time started, that’s when we went, ‘Oh shit,’” Williams told CNN. “We need to get out of here.” Meanwhile, a team of six police officers began racing through the neighborhood and knocking on doors, moving people out of the area in the minutes before the explosion occurred.
As the clock ticked down to zero, the automated warning changed: “If you can hear this message, evacuate now,” it reportedly repeated. And just before the blast went off, the recording took an eerie turn. According to the Tennessean, police reported hearing the following lyric from the early ‘60s song “Downtown” by Petula Clark: “The lights are much brighter there.” And then, at 6:30 a.m., the street exploded in a flash, downing trees and shattering windows.
“It was just this huge fireball explosion,” witness David Malloy, who was out walking his dog at the time, told CNN. “I didn’t know what to make of it.”
Another witness, Buck McCoy added: “”Everything on the street was fire. There were three cars that were fully engulfed.”
The explosion damaged some 41 businesses, partially collapsed a building, and affected an AT&T network hub badly enough to disrupt local wireless service and flights at Nashville’s airport, CNN reports. Video of the explosion — which sent three people to the hospital with non-critical injuries — is available here.
Police have identified a person of interest, but not a suspect.
On Friday, Nashville Mayor John Cooper said someone set off a “deliberate bomb” with the purported intention of causing pandemonium, while a “federal law enforcement source” told CNN that Nashville faced no credible threats ahead of the bombing that would indicate a terrorist threat. Cooper also pointed to the timing, suggesting it was “clearly done when no one was going to be around.”
“It would be a different message if it was 5 p.m. on a Friday,” he said. “It seems intentional, but it seems like a one-off.”
As of Saturday, the Times reported that authorities were working on over 500 leads, with more than 250 FBI agents on the case. Initially, officers reported finding tissue that potentially indicated human remains near the blast site, which CNN said could point to a suicide bombing. It’s not presently clear whether or not anyone was inside the vehicle during the explosion, though.
On Saturday, however, investigators arrived in Nashville’s Antioch neighborhood and searched the home of Anthony Quinn Warner, now a person of interest in the case. Warner’s professional history reportedly includes operating a company that made burglar alarms, and his neighbors reported seeing an RV similar to the one featured in surveillance footage parked in his backyard over the past few months. Tony Rodriguez, who lives in Warner’s duplex, told the Washington Post that he watched police remove a computer motherboard from the residence, and that Warner had staked out much of his property — particularly the area where he parked his RV — with “no trespassing” signs.
Authorities do not suspect any further threat.
Per the Tennessean, “Federal authorities are scouring the city for evidence on Warner,” but investigators reportedly believe the bomb threat to have been an isolated incident. “Let me reiterate that Nashville is safe,” Metro Police Chief John Drake reportedly said Saturday. “We feel and know that we have no known threats at this time.”
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