Chilling images from the police corps camera released on Monday capture the unsettling calm before the Nashville Christmas attack – then the deafening explosion itself and chaos minutes later.
The impressive footage was recorded by the camera of police officer Michael Sipos, one of the first six officers at the scene to investigate the suspicious trailer that triggered an audible warning to evacuate around 6:30 am Christmas morning.
The nearly 13-minute video begins with Sipos and his fellow police officers asking area residents to leave – while the ominous message from the trailer echoes up and down a deserted Second Avenue.
“Your main objective is to evacuate these buildings now,” a woman’s voice can be heard saying in the automatic recording that emanates from the trailer. “Do not approach this vehicle.”
Police officers can be heard commenting on the unnerving scene.
“This is so weird,” said Sipos. “This is like something out of a movie.”
“Like ‘The Purge?’”, Another police officer can be heard asking, referring to the dystopian horror series.
Strangely undermining the tension, Brenda Lee’s “Rockin ‘Around the Christmas Tree” can be heard playing over the loudspeaker of a closed store as the cops pass by.
Passing through the trailer, a policeman noticed that the vehicle was stopped outside an important AT&T building.
“That building next door is the building that houses all the hard phone lines across the southeast,” said the official.
“It makes sense,” replied another. “Good place to put a bomb.”
Investigators have since theorized that the bomber, Anthony Quinn Warner, may have targeted the building with the intention of shutting down the service, possibly due to a paranoid fear of 5G cell technology and surveillance.
Sipos ended up leaving Second Avenue, returning to his marked car.
A few seconds after Sipos opens the trunk, the loud explosion can be heard in the distance, followed by a cacophony of car alarms.
Sipos calmly put on a protective vest, closed the trunk and returned to Second Avenue, the way back now full of broken glass and other splinters.
He returned to Second Avenue in time for his camera to capture the burning trailer, and a handful of shaken residents emerged from the buildings, asking questions to which the police had no answers.
Intermittent crashes could be heard minutes after the biggest explosion, which a police officer warned could be ammunition inside the trailer exploding with heat.
“We are listening to secondary. It could be ammunition in the vehicle, ”a policeman could be heard saying on the police radio. “Don’t be openly. Don’t go outside on Second Avenue. “
As doctors and firefighters flooded the scene, they also made more curious onlookers asking what happened.
“Dude, believe me, go over there,” Sipos directed a civilian, pointing away from the scene of the explosion.
The blast killed Warner, injured three others and caused massive collateral damage, including telephone services across Tennessee and the south.
The investigators said the 63-year-old IT expert appears to have acted alone.