The man behind Nashville bombing: A quiet life, a thunderous demise

Written by Rick Rojas, Adam Goldman and Jamie McGee
Anthony Warner had a solitary job as an info expertise specialist, stopping in to varied workplaces to repair computer systems. He was 63. He was not married. His neighbors barely knew him.
He despatched an electronic mail to considered one of his shoppers three weeks in the past to say he was retiring. He began shedding possessions: He instructed his ex-girlfriend that he had most cancers and gave her his automobile. Records present that he signed away his house on the day earlier than Thanksgiving.
But he made certain to carry on to 1 very last thing: His RV, a Thor Motor Coach Chateau that he saved in his yard.

He parked the automobile round 1:22 a.m. Christmas morning on Second Avenue North in downtown Nashville, within the coronary heart of a district of honky-tonks, eating places and boot outlets that might usually be packed however was quiet within the small hours of a vacation morning. The RV had been rigged with explosives and a speaker set to play a warning and a tune: “Downtown” by Petula Clark, successful launched in 1964 celebrating the intense lights and bustle of a vibrant metropolis.
The lights are a lot brighter there / You can overlook all of your troubles, overlook all of your cares
Just a few hours later, cops heard the speaker’s message and rushed to clear as many individuals out of close by residences and lodges as they might. Just earlier than daybreak, the RV exploded, its concussion reverberating for blocks. Debris was flung a number of blocks away. Warner was contained in the RV. It is believed that he was the one one who died.
“We’ve come to the conclusion that Anthony Warner is the bomber,” Donald Q. Cochran, the U.S. legal professional for the Middle District of Tennessee, mentioned at a information convention Sunday. “He was present when the bomb went off, and he perished in the bombing.”
Investigators mentioned they imagine that he acted alone. He was recognized by way of stays discovered scattered among the many wreckage.
Hundreds of federal investigators had flocked into Nashville after the blast, chasing the leads that poured in by the tons of to find the offender. Now that they’ve discovered him, they’re nonetheless attempting to make sense of who he was and why he would set off an explosion that shattered a district the place the lights are certainly shiny and other people flock to overlook their hassle and cares in a yr with no scarcity of them.
“These pieces of information will help us understand the suspect’s motives,” Douglas Korneski, the particular agent accountable for the FBI area workplace in Memphis, mentioned on the information convention. He added, “None of those answers will ever be enough for those who have been affected by this event.”
Warner emerged as an individual of curiosity after investigators from the Tennessee Highway Patrol had been capable of finding a automobile identification quantity for the RV among the many rubble.
That led federal brokers to a brick duplex belonging to Warner in Antioch, a group within the Nashville space roughly 11 miles from the place the explosion occurred. On Saturday morning, a bomb group swept the duplex to verify for explosives, after which dozens of federal investigators combed the property for proof.
Images of the identical duplex, captured on Google Street View in March and May 2019, present an RV within the yard that seems just like the one which the police say was detonated.
Smoke billows from the positioning of an explosion in Nashville, Tennessee, on December 25 [Andrew Nelles/Tennessean.com/USA Today Network via Reuters].
Warner had expertise working with electronics as an info expertise contractor for Nashville space companies, and in addition had a burglar alarm enterprise that was registered in Tennessee from 1993-98, in keeping with state data.
Steve Fridrich, president of Fridrich & Clark Realty in Nashville, mentioned that he had been in touch with the FBI about Warner, who he mentioned he employed often, often round as soon as a month, to work on computer systems. Fridrich mentioned that Warner was not an worker and that he believed he supplied IT help for a number of companies.
Fridrich mentioned Warner despatched the agency an electronic mail Dec. 5 saying that he was retiring.
“He’s a nice guy, and this seems uncharacteristic of the Tony we know,” Fridrich wrote in a textual content message. “He was very professional and knew his stuff.”
The two-bedroom duplex searched by investigators is considered one of a number of on a quiet cul-de-sac. Children performed tag close by and neighbors regarded on as brokers from the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives streamed out and in of the home. “It’s a quiet neighborhood,” mentioned Diana Hernandez, who lived a number of blocks away. “It’s very surprising. It’s like a movie scene.”
Across the road from the duplex, Anna Blackmon, who has lived within the neighborhood for 30 years, mentioned she didn’t know the one who lived there, or anybody within the duplexes, as they had been largely rental properties with a close to fixed churn of residents. “You have everybody in and out all the time,” she mentioned.
Neighbors mentioned that Warner grew up in a house roughly a quarter-mile away. No one answered when a reporter visited the property Saturday, and different efforts to achieve Warner’s household had been unsuccessful.
Bernice Gilley, who has lived throughout the road from the Warner household for 56 years, mentioned she remembered Warner and his brother enjoying soccer within the yard as youngsters. The household worshipped at a Roman Catholic church a number of miles away, Gilley mentioned.
“They were one of the nicest people you would ever want to meet,” she mentioned. “They’ve always been a fine family.”
Nashville was nonetheless attempting Sunday to grapple with the results of the bombing. The road was charred and suffering from mangled particles. At least one constructing collapsed, and dozens of others sustained injury. The pressure of the blast blew out home windows and doorways for blocks.
Investigators haven’t mentioned whether or not there was any significance to the particular location the place the RV was parked, in entrance of an AT&T transmission facility. The explosion prompted disruption that reached throughout the area, slicing off cellphone and web service to houses and enterprise throughout components of Tennessee and into Kentucky and Alabama. Flights had been grounded and 911 operations had been knocked offline. Warner’s solely obvious tie to the corporate to return to mild up to now is a relatively tenuous one: His father as soon as labored for Southern Bell, which finally merged into what’s now AT&T. Law enforcement officers have mentioned they’re uncertain whether or not there was some other connection.
AT&T mentioned Sunday that its crews had been capable of make appreciable progress, restoring electrical energy to 4 flooring of the constructing and pumping out 3 toes of water within the basement from firefighting efforts. The firm had arrange a transportable cell web site to assist return some service, and had extra crews heading into Nashville.
The police launched {a photograph} of the RV that reveals the automobile heading by way of downtown with its headlights on, the white camper illuminated by streetlights and glowing storefronts.
Officer James Luellen of the Nashville Department came across the automobile a number of hours later. He was responding to stories of gunfire. Instead, he discovered the RV, with its speaker warning {that a} bomb was inside and that it was about to detonate.
He additionally remembered the tune that was interspersed with a countdown. Lyrics about shiny lights caught in his thoughts.
He referred to as for backup and was rapidly joined by 5 different officers: Brenna Hosey, Michael Sipos, Amanda Topping, James Wells and Sgt. Timothy Miller. Other than Miller, an 11-year veteran, none had been with the Police Department longer than 4 years.
Since Friday, they’ve been held up as heroes, with officers saying that the bombing might have created way more carnage with out their fast motion.
“I think they may consider what they did a regular part of their duties,” Mayor John Cooper mentioned as he stood beside the officers at a information convention Sunday. “But we in Nashville know it was extraordinary.”
At the information convention, the officers spoke publicly about their work on Christmas morning for the primary time. They described speeding into buildings and rousting residents — “scaring the bejesus” out of at the least considered one of them.
Then there was a burst of orange, and the officers remembered quickly shedding their listening to from the concussion of the blast. They remembered looking for their colleagues afterward, apprehensive that that they had been harm or killed, after which feeling grateful that they and others within the neighborhood had survived.
“That was God,” Wells mentioned. “I’m not going to shy away from that.”