Nashville law enforcement officers being hailed as heroes for saving lives during a major Christmas morning bombing on Sunday described their quick actions to evacuate buildings as they ran against a scary countdown recording for Petula Clark’s detonation and song “Downtown” coming of a recreational vehicle packed with explosives.
“Right away, they didn’t think about their own lives. They didn’t think about themselves. They thought about the citizens of Nashville and protected them and started knocking on doors,” said Metro Nashville police chief John Drake, when presenting five of the six officers at a news conference. “If they hadn’t made these efforts, we would be talking about the tragedy of people and lives lost.”
Nashville Metropolitan Police Officers James Luellen, Brenna Hosey, Michael Sipos, Amanda Topping, James Wells and Sergeant. Timothy Miller was described as “heroes” by Drake and the mayor of Nashville, John Cooper.
“I think they can consider what they did was just a normal part of their duties. But we in Nashville know it was extraordinary and it is exciting to have them in our community and we need to acknowledge their heroism,” said Cooper, before each police officer reported the bombing that damaged at least 41 buildings, set several vehicles on fire and left a huge crater on Second Avenue North.
Human remains were discovered amid the wreckage of the explosion and investigators were working to determine if they belonged to the RV owner, which several police sources informed of the investigation told ABC News that he had been identified as Anthony Quinn Warner of Antioch, Tennessee, a suburb Nashville.
A spokesman for the Nashville Metro Police Department confirmed to ABC News on Sunday that Warner is a “person of interest” in the downtown Nashville explosion.
Authorities believe the RV was parked in front of an AT&T broadcast building at 1:22 am on Friday, but it is still unclear whether the building was targeted.
The motive for the attack, which left three people with minor injuries, remains under investigation.
Federal agents arrived Saturday at Warner-related properties in Antioquia to conduct searches authorized by the court, sources told ABC News. A Google Maps Street View image of Warner’s address shows a trailer in a fenced-in section of the courtyard that looks similar to the one used in the explosion.
More than 250 FBI employees from at least seven field offices are in Nashville working on the investigation, including special agents, analysts and professionals who are conducting interviews, collecting evidence and coordinating with partner agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and state and local investigators.
The high-risk drama began to unfold around 6 am Friday morning, when police officers working the midnight shift received a call for shots fired inside a building located at 178 Second Avenue North, they said. the authorities.
Officer Luellen said he was the first to arrive at the scene and started checking the building for shots and asked for the security code to enter. He said that the moment Officer Hosey arrived at the scene to support him, a recorded voice from the trailer parked on the street began to recite an urgent warning.
“The RV started making an announcement somewhere along the lines, don’t quote me exactly, but it’s, ‘There’s a big bomb inside this vehicle. Its main purpose is to evacuate,'” said Luellen. “I wasn’t sure what I heard, so I looked at Officer Hosey just to see if we heard the same thing, and then it started again.”
He said he contacted his supervisor, the sergeant. Miller, who told him to ask all available officers to get to the scene and start evacuating residents.
When police officers Topping and Wells started blocking streets in the area, Luellen, Hosey and Sipos entered an apartment building and started knocking on doors and alerting the residence to a possible public safety risk outside. He said residents of about six or seven apartments were told to evacuate through the basement’s back door.
Luellen said that he and his colleague returned to the RV area to move their patrol cars away and make sure that no other civilians were in danger. He said the curtains in the trailer were drawn and there were no registration plates.
Hosey recalled that the recorded voice coming from RV then started a chilling countdown, saying, “14 minutes to detonate.” She said the warning was followed by Petula Clark’s song, “Downtown”.
Luellen said that while the voice of the trailer counted down from three minutes before the detonation, he spotted a man emerging from a nearby building with his dog. He said that as soon as he shouted for the man to go back inside, the trailer exploded.
“I was knocked to the ground. I got up immediately, fortunately without injury or anything like that. I noticed you in shock with your dog. I checked him, put him in,” said Luellen.
He said he then ran to check on Miller, who was still in his vehicle. He said the explosion caused Miller’s car airbag to fire and the sergeant was cutting it when he opened the door.
Hosey recalled that just before the explosion she saw a woman with a baby carriage and four children on the street. She said the vision “put my heart in my throat”.
“I am asking if I can help you … she has a baby stroller … and I tell her that there is a serious threat and we need you to go. I am grateful that we were able to get her out of there,” said Hosey.
She said she was thrown forward and dropped on the floor by the explosion.
“I made a call to a loved one to let them know I was okay and then I ran to the intersection to check on Miller and Luellen to make sure they were okay,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “That’s when I turned on the radio to make sure Wells was fine.”
She said she did not get an immediate response from Wells.
Wells said the explosion caused him to temporarily lose his hearing in his senior year and he did not hear Hosey and other officers talking to him on the radio.
Wells said that after listening to the music coming from the trailer, he feared that the police were being ambushed and began scanning the tops of buildings and garages for an active sniper.
“At that moment it felt real and it looked like there would be some secondary activity. So every time we left a building, we were sure that we were looking around and checking the high areas, just to make sure that no one was spying and looking at us”, said Wells.
He said that just before the explosion, he was walking back to the trailer and “I literally hear God tell me to turn around and go to see Topping, who was alone.”
“To me, it felt like I just took three steps and then the music stopped and when I’m going back to Topping now, I just see orange and then I hear a big bang,” said Wells.
He said the explosion made him stumble.
“I was saying to myself, ‘Stand up, stay alive,'” said Wells. “I just run and I’m running towards Topping to make sure she is okay. We kind of met in the middle and just grabbed and checked on each other.”
He said he yelled at Topping to get his gun if they were fired.
“It was just weird,” said Wells. “It looked like something out of a movie.”
Topping added that when he grabbed Wells. “I have never held someone so tightly.” She said that hearing Wells’ voice in that chaotic moment “was what made me see my kids at Christmas”.