The FBI has confirmed that Anthony Quinn Warner, 63, was the attacker who perished in the Nashville Christmas Day bombing, saying he died in an apparent suicide attack when an RV exploded outside of an AT&T building.
Local and federal officials said on Sunday that remains at the scene were a DNA match to Warner, an eccentric IT worker who lived outside of Nashville, and that he is believed to have acted alone in carrying out the attack.
‘We’re still following leads, but right now there is no indication that any other persons were involved,’ said Douglas Korneski, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Memphis field office. ‘We’ve reviewed hours of security video surrounding the recreation vehicle. We saw no other people involved.’
Nashville Mayor John Cooper today said he suspects that the AT&T transmission center was targeted in the attack, which wreaked havoc on phone systems in multiple Southern states on Christmas Day.
Cooper told CBS News’ Face the Nation that it ‘feels like there has to be some connection to the AT&T facility and the site of the bombing’.
At an earlier press conference, police officers described how the RV, which was covered in cameras and loudspeakers, played an ominous warning about the impending explosion and as well as the classic soul hit ‘Downtown’ by Petula Clark just before the blast.
Law enforcement sources told CBS that Warner is believed to have died in the explosion as DNA tests are performed on the remains.
The outlet reported that the FBI received at least two tips about Warner prior to the blast.
WSMV Nashville said that the FBI was digging into claims that Warner was paranoid about the idea that Americans are being spied on using 5G, which could explain the location of the explosion on 2nd Avenue North.
One business owner on that street said he’d spotted a similar RV parked in the area multiple times in the past few weeks, suggesting that Warner may have ‘staked out’ the site of the attack.
FBI agents raided Warner’s home on Bakertown Road in Antioch on Saturday morning.
Several neighbors described Warner as an ‘oddball’ and said they’d seen an RV parked outside the home which matched the one used in the attack..
Media reports identified Warner as a person of interest on Saturday as FBI agents raided his home, where a vehicle matching the one used in the bombing was seen parked in Google street view images.
According to Newsweek, authorities will swab Warner’s mother to determine if he is a match to the remains found at the bomb site.
Agents also spent time searching another location on Saturday, as well as Warner’s home, and spoke to a Nashville real estate agent who called in to say Warner used to work for him.
Steve Fridrich told WSMV that Warner was a subcontractor who had done IT work for him for years.
‘Nice guy. You know, he was a techie guy – don’t mean anything negative about that. He would do this thing and leave. He didn’t bother anybody. He did his thing and leave,’ Fridrich said.
In a different interview with the Tennessean, Fridrich said Warner ‘seemed very personable to us – this is quite out of character I think’.
The Daily Beast reported that Warner was previously arrested in January 1978 and found guilty on an unspecified felony charge in 1980.
He has been described as an ‘oddball’ by neighbors, some of whom had reported seeing the RV used in the explosion parked outside of his home.
Tony Rodriguez lives in the second home within the duplex that agents raided on Saturday but told the Washington Post that he never spoke to his neighbor and did not know his name.
He alleged that Warner kept ‘No Trespassing’ signs around the home, especially around the RV, and was often seen tinkering with antenna above the house.
Rodriguez also claimed that investigators had taken a computer motherboard from Warner’s house during the search.
Another neighbor Steven Stone, 61, confirmed that he had seen a similar RV parked outside of Warner’s place.
‘When I looked out my window and saw all the law enforcement that’s when it hit me that I’d see the camper up there,’ he told USA Today.
The FBI was said to have received two tips concerning Warner prior to the explosion, including one from a person who reported that he was making bombs in his RV in August 2019, The Sun reported.
A man whose business was destroyed in Friday’s explosion came forward on Sunday to suggest that Warner had been ‘staking out’ the area.
Peter Gibson, owner of Pride and Glory Tattoo, said he’s seen an RV parked outside his parlor several times in the past few weeks.
‘I can’t say if it was that one, but it was very similar,’ Gibson told WZTV.
‘Whoever it was, they’d been staking out and they’d been doing their laps and their routine, practicing for a couple of weeks, it seems.’
Adding to the mystery over Warner were the revelations that he had transferred his Antioch home to Swing late last month via a quitclaim deed.
The $160,000 home had been transferred for free to 29-year-old Michelle Swing on November 25 – but she claims she was unaware of the exchange
Swing, who lives in Los Angeles, said she was unaware of the transfer and her signature does not appear on the deed dated November 25.
‘In the state of Tennessee you can deed property to someone else without their consent or their signature or anything,’ Swing told DailyMail.com on Saturday.
‘I didn’t even buy the house he just deeded it over to me without my knowledge.
‘This all very weird to me, that’s about all I can say.’
She declined to say whether she had ever met Warner or whether she had family links to him, adding: ‘I’ve been told to direct everything else to FBI.’
Warner reportedly informed Swing of the home transfer in a letter, which she handed over to the FBI.
In the letter Warner said that he ‘intended to travel on Christmas Eve to spend a few weeks in the woods with his dogs’, the Sun reported.
He also offered a few details about his property before concluding with a bizarre line: ‘The attic has plywood and lighting, take a look. The basement is not normal, take a look. Woof woof Julio.’
Records show Warner also transferred another home on Bakertown Road to Swing via a quitclaim deed in January 2019.
The $249,000 house had previously belonged to a member of his family and Warner had only been in possession of it for five months before again giving it to Swing for free.
She later also used a quitclaim to give the house to another person.
The house was originally owned by Warner’s father Charles but was passed to Warner’s brother Steve after Charles’ death in 2011.
Steve died of cancer in September 2018, a month after Warner acquired the house.
Court records show Warner’s mother Chris tried to stop the transfer of the second home last year after accusing her son of acting in his own interest as Steve’s power-of-attorney before his death, according to the Tennessean. Chris later dropped the case against her son.
Swing’s address in the record for the transfer is listed as Lenoir City, Tennessee, a two-hour drive from Nashville.
In March 2019, she also used a quitclaim to give away the house to a person named Betty Lane, according to county records.
Friday’s blast emanated from a white RV parked outside the AT&T building on 2nd Avenue at 6.40 am.
The explosion injured three people and caused severe damage to the city’s downtown area.
Cops had been called to the area around 6am following reports of shots fired.
They arrived to find no evidence of a shooting but instead encountered the RV, which was playing a recording of a woman’s voice warning that it would explode in 15 minutes.
Six responding officers who rushed to evacuate the area have been hailed as heroes for their quick efforts in the face of grave danger.
They are: Officers Brenna Hosey, James Luellen, Michael Sipos, Amanda Topping, James Wells and Sergeant Timothy Miller.
Five of the officers described their version of events at a press conference on Sunday morning, revealing that the RV played the song Downtown by Petula Clark before it detonated.
Luellen said he arrived at the scene first and scoped out the building where gunshots were reported, finding now evidence of gunfire.
Hosey arrived soon after, at which point both officers heard the recording coming from the vehicle.
‘There’s a large bomb within this vehicle, your primary objective is to evacuate,’ Luellen quoted a woman’s voice as saying.
‘I looked at Officer Hosey just to verify we heard the same thing, and then it started over,’ he said.
Luellen said he reported the audio to his supervisor, Sgt Miller, who ordered the deployment of all available units and instructed officers to evacuate the area.
Minutes later the RV started playing a three-minute countdown, followed by ‘Downtown’, Luellen said.
He said all the shades were down on the vehicle, which didn’t have a tag.
Then came the explosion, which knocked Luellen to the ground and activated an airbag in another officer’s vehicle.
Officer Wells described hearing a ‘voice from God’ which told him to check on his partner Topping seconds before the blast went off, throwing him backward.
Topping said she sprinted to Wells and the pair ran for cover in a doorway.
‘I’ve never grabbed somebody so hard in my life,’ Topping said, her voice shaking with emotion.
Wells said that EMTs tried to take him to the hospital for examination, but he convinced them to let him go and focus their efforts on the three reported injuries.
Each of the officers described how they called loved ones to assure that they were okay before news of the explosion reached the media.