Police name person under investigation in Nashville bombing

Christmas day explosion wounded three people and damaged dozens of businesses, including an AT&T switching centre.

Investigators continue to examine on Sunday, December 27, 2020, in Nashville, Tennesse, the site of an explosion that shook the largely deserted downtown streets early Christmas morning [Mark Humphrey/AP Photo]

Nashville Police have said Anthony Quinn Warner is under investigation in connection with the Christmas Day bombing that rocked the US city of Nashville.

Metro Nashville Police Department Spokesman Don Aaron confirmed Warner’s identity on Sunday.

Federal and state investigators are trying to determine who set off a bomb inside a recreational vehicle on Friday morning, injuring three people and damaging more than 40 businesses.

They are also working to identify human remains found at the scene.

Nashville Chief of Police John Drake speaks at a news conference in Nashville, Tennessee [Mark Humphrey/AP Photo]

Meanwhile, local media reported on Sunday that FBI agents investigating the explosion visited a real estate agency where Warner had worked on computers.

Steve Fridrich, owner of Fridrich & Clark Realty in Nashville’s Green Hills neighbourhood, told the Tennessean newspaper he spoke with the agents late on Saturday about Warner, 63, after the company told the FBI he had worked there.

According to public records, Warner had lived at a home in Antioch, southeast of Nashville, that was searched on Saturday by FBI and US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives officials following the huge Christmas Day blast.

Federal agents have said they are following up on more than 500 leads, and are working to identify what appear to be human remains found in the wreckage.

The explosion in the heart of the US country music capital wounded three people and damaged more than 40 businesses including an AT&T switching centre, disrupting mobile, internet and TV services across central Tennessee and parts of four other states.

Fridrich said that for four or five years Warner had come into the office roughly once a month to provide computer consulting services, until this month when Warner told the company in an email that he would no longer be working for them. He gave no reason, according to Fridrich.

“He seemed very personable to us – this is quite out of character, I think,” Fridrich told the newspaper.

FBI and ATF agents search the basement of a home in Nashville, Tennessee [Mark Humphrey/AP Photo]

At a news conference on Sunday, five Nashville police officers who were on the scene early on Friday recalled the dramatic moments before the explosion, as they scrambled to evacuate homes and buildings and called for a bomb squad, which was en route when the motor home blew up.

Officers had heard music and an automated announcement coming from the RV warning them about the impending explosion as they sprang into action, requesting access codes for buildings and trying to shepherd as many residents to safety as possible.

“I was thrown forward, knocked to the ground,” officer Brenna Hosey told reporters about the moment of the explosion. “But I was able to catch myself, I was fine.”

The officers, who were initially responding to reports of gunfire in the area, have been hailed as heroes by city leaders.

Source: News Agencies

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