Nashville bombing suspect died in blast
“We’ve come to the conclusion that an individual named Anthony Warner is the bomber.”
U.S. Attorney Donald Cochran on Sunday identified the man responsible for the Nashville motor home explosion on Christmas day as 63-year-old Anthony Warner, whose home in nearby Antioch, Tennessee, had been searched by FBI agents over the weekend – and who died in the blast.
“He was present when the bomb went off, and he perished in the bombing.”
The FBI said DNA taken from his home matched samples recovered at the site of the blast.
The explosion in the heart of America’s country music capital injured three people and damaged more than 40 businesses including an AT&T switching center, disrupting mobile, internet and TV services across central Tennessee and parts of four other states.
The owner of a real estate agency where Warner had worked told the Tennessean newspaper that Warner had come into the office roughly once a month for four or five years to provide computer consulting services, until this month when Warner said in an email that he would no longer be working for them.
Five Nashville police officers who were on the scene early Friday recalled the dramatic moments ahead of the explosion as they scrambled to evacuate nearby homes and buildings.
OFFICER JAMES WELLS: “I just see orange, and I hear a loud boom, as I’m stumbling, cause it rocked me that hard, I started stumbling, I just told myself, ‘stay on your feet, stay alive.”
OFFICER AMANDA TOPPING: “I’ll never forget the windows shattering after the blast all around me. It kinda looked like a big prop from a movie scene, all the glass breaking at once.”
Prior to the blast, music described by one officer as the 1960s song “Downtown” by Petula Clark blared from the RV, along with an automated announcement warning about the impending explosion.
The FBI said it’s too early in the investigation to talk about the suspect’s motive.
