More than a year before Anthony Warner detonated a bomb in downtown Nashville on Christmas Day, police officers visited his home after his girlfriend told police he was building bombs in a trailer at his residence, according to documents obtained by Associated Press. But they were unable to make contact with him or see inside his trailer.
Officers were called to Pamela Perry’s Nashville home on August 21, 2019, after receiving a report from her attorney that she was making suicide threats while sitting on her porch with firearms, the police department said. from Metropolitan Nashville on Tuesday in an email statement.
A police report said Raymond Throckmorton, Perry’s lawyer, told officers that day that he also represented Warner.
When the officers arrived at Perry’s house, the police said she had two unloaded pistols beside her on the porch. She told them that those guns belonged to “Tony Warner,” said the police, and she no longer wanted them at home. Perry, then 62, was transported for a psychological assessment after talking to mental health professionals on the phone.
Throckmorton told Tennessean that Perry feared about her safety and thought that Warner could hurt her. The lawyer was also at the scene that day and told officers that Warner “often talks about the military and bomb making,” said the police report.
Warner “knows what he is doing and is capable of making a bomb,” Throckmorton said to officials who responded.
The police then went to Warner’s house, located about 1.5 miles from Perry’s house, but he did not answer the door when they knocked several times. They saw the trailer in the yard, the report said, but the courtyard was fenced and the police were unable to see the vehicle’s interior.
The report said there were also “several security cameras and wires connected to an alarm signal at the front door” of the house. The officers then notified supervisors and detectives.
“They saw no evidence of a crime and had no authority to enter their house or fenced property,” said the police statement.
After police officers visited Warner’s home last August, the police department’s dangerous device unit received a copy of the police report. During the week of August 26, 2019, they contacted Throckmorton. The police said the officers remembered Throckmorton saying that Warner “didn’t care about the police” and would not allow Warner “to allow a visual inspection of the trailer”.
Throckmorton disputes that he told the police that they could not search the vehicle. “I have no memory of that,” he told Tennessean. “I didn’t represent you anymore. He was not an active customer. I am not a criminal defense attorney. “
Throckmorton told the paper that he represented Warner in a civil case several years ago, and that Warner was no longer his client in August 2019. “Someone somewhere dropped the ball,” he said.
The day after the officers visited Warner’s home, the police report and identifying information about Warner was sent to the FBI to check its databases and determine whether Warner had previous military connections, the police said.
Later that day, the police department said that “the FBI reported that it checked its possessions and found no record of Warner”. An FBI spokesman, Darrell DeBusk, told Tennessean that the agency had conducted a standard registration check from agency to agency.
Six days later, “the FBI reported that the Defense Department’s checks on Warner were all negative,” said the police department.
No other information about Warner reached the department or the FBI’s attention after August 2019, police said. “At no time was there any evidence of a crime detected and no further action was taken,” the statement said. “ATF also had no information about him.”
Warner’s only arrest was on marijuana-related charges in 1978.
The attack took place on Christmas morning, well before the downtown streets started to move. Police were responding to a report of shots fired on Friday when they found the trailer with a recorded warning that a bomb would go off in 15 minutes. Then, for reasons that may never be known, the audio switched to a recording of Petula Clark’s 1964 hit Downtown, just before the explosion. Dozens of buildings were damaged and several people were injured.
Investigators did not discover the reason for the Christmas attack or why Warner selected the location, which damaged an AT&T building and wreaked havoc on cell phone, police and hospital communications in several southern states while the company worked to restore service. The company said on Monday that most services were restored for residents and businesses.