Nashville police were told in 2019 that Anthony Warner was making a bomb inside his trailer – but nothing was done to stop him.
Warner’s girlfriend told Nashville law enforcement officials on August 21, 2019 that he “was building bombs in his home trailer,” according to a report published on Tuesday in The Tennessean.
City police officers passed the information on to the FBI and ATF.
But when authorities appeared at Warren’s door, no one responded, and a subsequent request to search the property was denied, Tennessean reported.
Warner’s bomb making continued unhindered until Christmas morning, when he detonated explosives in the vehicle and destroyed a section of downtown Nashville.
Records analyzed by the newspaper show that Raymond Throckmorton, a woman’s lawyer, initially called the police and said that Warner’s unidentified friend was concerned about the comments he had made – and did not want two weapons she said belonged to Warner at your home.
Throckmorton told police that Warner “often talks about the military and bomb making” and “knows what he’s doing and is capable of making a bomb,” the records say.
The police saw the trailer in Warren’s garage, but it was surrounded so they wouldn’t get in.
“They saw no evidence of a crime and had no authority to enter their home or fenced property,” said Nashville Police Department spokesman Don Aaron in a statement to the newspaper.
The Nashville Police Department forwarded the information to the feds, but “the FBI reported that they checked their possessions and found no record of Warner,” said Aaron.
On August 28, 2019, the United States Department of Defense also reported that “Warner’s checks were all negative,” Aaron told The Tennessean.
“At no time was there any evidence of a crime detected and no further action was taken,” said the spokesman. “No additional information about Warner reached the department or the FBI after August 2019.”
Warner, 63, appeared on the radar at around 6:30 am on Christmas when he detonated a bomb that killed him, injured three others and damaged 41 buildings.
The explosion, outside an AT&T facility, disrupted communication systems in parts of the Southeast.