Nashville police on Wednesday defended their failure to follow up on a 2019 complaint that RV bomber Anthony Warner was making explosives, saying officers had no “probable cause” to pursue the case.
Police chief John Drake told a news conference that officers returned to the house several times after the August 2019 complaint from Warner’s then girlfriend – but they never spoke to him and the case went dark.
“The cops have been through at least maybe a week or more and knocked on the door,” Drake said in the interview, broadcast on WKRN-TV. “They passed, they drove several times.”
He said the police never sought a search warrant.
“You had no reasonable suspicion to go to a judge,” said Drake. “They could, but it would have been denied.”
“The officers did not take it seriously,” he said. “They came back, knocked on the door. They went several times, they followed up with the team of dangerous devices. “
“I believe that the police did everything they could legally,” added the chief. I mean, we could have followed more. Retrospective is 20-20. “
Sixteen months later, Warner detonated a bomb inside his trailer outside an AT&T facility on Christmas morning, killing himself, injuring three people, damaging 41 buildings and interrupting communications in large areas of the Southeast.
Police said after the explosion that Warner was not on his radar.
The Nashville Metropolitan Police Department acknowledged this week that Warner’s girlfriend and his lawyer told police on August 21, 2019 that Warner “was building bombs in his resident’s trailer,” The Tennessean said in a report.
The woman’s lawyer also told police that Warner “often talks about military and bomb making” and “knows what he’s doing and is capable of making a bomb”.
In addition to following up, Drake said his department had notified the FBI and other federal officials, but there were no reports about Warner.
The chief said on Wednesday that there were never any reports that Warner had a history of violence and said he only had one marijuana charge in 1978 on his record.
“And since then it has been completely clean,” said Drake.
He said the police are still trying to gather details about the 2019 complaint and said he has not yet determined whether the investigation has been closed or remains open.