A recreational vehicle parked in the deserted streets of downtown Nashville exploded early Christmas morning, causing widespread communications outages that took down police emergency systems and grounded holiday travel at the city's airport.
Federal authorities identified on Sunday the man they say is responsible for the Christmas Day bombing and said that he died in the explosion.
Follow along for the latest updates:
Authorities have identified Anthony Quinn Warner as the suspect in the Christmas Day explosion; investigators used DNA evidence to link Warner to the blast.
Donald Q. Cochran, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, said that Warner "was present when the bomb went off," adding that the suspect "perished in the bombing."
FBI special agent Douglas Korneski said that there is no indication anyone else was involved in the explosion, save for the suspect.
The FBI said it matched the RV's vehicle identification number to a registration belonging to Warner, and searched a home in connection to the suspect.
Authorities did not immediately provide details about a potential motive.
Metro Nashville Police Department Spokesman Don Aaron confirmed Warner’s identity earlier Sunday. Federal and state investigators are trying to determine who set off a bomb inside a recreational vehicle Friday morning, injuring three people and damaging more than 40 businesses. They are also working to identify human remains found at the scene.
Separately, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press that federal investigators have started examining Warner’s digital footprint and financial history. They are also examining a recent deed transfer of a home in suburban Nashville.
The official could not discuss the case publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The official said forensic analysts are reviewing evidence collected from the blast site to try to identify the components of the explosives and are also reviewing information from the U.S. Bomb Data Center for intelligence and investigative leads.
Police officers on Sunday provided harrowing details of responding to the explosion in downtown Nashville, at times getting choked up reliving the moments that led up to the blast and offering gratitude that they were still alive.
“This is going to tie us together forever, for the rest of my life,” Officer James Wells, who suffered some hearing loss due to the explosion, told a news conference. “Christmas will never be the same.”
The responding officers gave their accounts of what happened to reporters while investigators continued to chip away at the motive of the bombing of a recreational vehicle that blew up on a mostly deserted street just before it issued a recorded warning advising people nearby to evacuate.
“I just see orange and then I hear a loud boom. As I’m stumbling around, I just tell myself to stay on my feet and to stay alive,” Wells said, at times tearing up and repeating that he believed he heard God tell him to walk away moments before the blast.
Officer Amanda Topping said she initially parked their police car beside the RV while responding to the call before moving it once they heard the recording playing. Topping said she called her wife to let her know that “things were just really strange” as she helped guide people away from the RV.
That’s when she heard the announcement from the RV switch from a warning to playing the 1964 hit “Downtown” by Petula Clark. Moments later the explosion hit.
“I felt the waves of heat but I kind of just lost it and started sprinting toward (Wells),” Topping said. “I’ve never grabbed someone so hard in my life.”
Officer Brenna Hosey said she and her colleagues knocked on six or seven doors in nearby apartments to warn people to evacuate. She particularly remembered knocking on a door where a startled mother of four children answered.
“I don’t have kids but I have cousins and nieces, people who I love who are small,” Hosey said, adding she had to plead with the family to leave the building as quickly as possible.
The attack, which damaged an AT&T building, has continued to wreak havoc on cellphone service and police and hospital communications in several Southern states as the company worked to restore service.
Nashville Police Chief John Drake emphasized during the Sunday press conference that Nashville is safe and that there are no known threats against the city.
Mayor John Cooper thanked the Nashville police officers and first responders, writing to Twitter, "I’m very thankful for the quick thinking and courageous actions of our brave police officers who saved many lives before the Christmas Day terroristic attack."
"To all of Nashville’s first responders, thank you for your service that day and every day," Cooper wrote.
Meanwhile, investigators from multiple federal and local law enforcement agencies descended on a home in Antioch, in suburban Nashville, on Saturday after receiving information relevant to the investigation, said FBI Special Agent Jason Pack.
Another law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said investigators regard a person associated with the property as a person of interest. They did not identify the person.
Federal agents could be seen looking around the property, searching the home and the backyard. A Google Maps image captured in May 2019 had shown a recreational vehicle similar to the one that exploded parked in the backyard. It was not at the property on Saturday, according to an AP reporter at the scene.
There were other signs of progress in the investigation, as the FBI revealed that it was looking at a number of individuals who may be connected to it. Officials also said no additional explosive devices have been found — indicating no active threat to the area. Investigators have received around 500 tips and leads.
“It’s just going to take us some time,” Douglas Korneski, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Memphis field office, said at a Saturday afternoon news conference. “Our investigative team is turning over every stone” to understand who did this and why.
Investigators said they were working to identify human remains found at the scene. Beyond that, the only known casualties were three injured people.
The infrastructure damage, meanwhile, was broadly felt, due to an AT&T central office being affected by the blast. Police emergency systems in Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama, as well as Nashville’s COVID-19 community hot line and a handful of hospital systems, remained out of service.
The building contained a telephone exchange, with network equipment in it — but the company has declined to say exactly how many people have been impacted.
Asked whether the AT&T building could have been a possible target, Korneski said authorities are, "looking at every possible motive that could be involved.”
Investigators shut down the heart of downtown Nashville’s tourist scene — an area packed with honky-tonks, restaurants and shops — as they shuffled through broken glass and damaged buildings to learn more about the explosion.
AT&T said Sunday it was rerouting service to other facilities as the company worked to restore its heavily damaged building. The company said in a statement that it was bringing in resources to help recover affected voice and data services and expects to have 24 additional trailers of disaster recovery equipment at the site by the end of the day.
Restoration efforts faced several challenges, which included a fire that forced their teams to work with safety and structural engineers and drilling access holes into the building in order to reconnect power.
Ray Neville, president of technology at T-Mobile, said on Twitter Saturday that service disruptions affected Louisville, Nashville, Knoxville, Birmingham and Atlanta.
The Federal Aviation Administration has since issued a temporary flight restriction around the airport, requiring pilots to follow strict procedures until Dec. 30.
Camping World Chairman and CEO and CNBC personality Marcus Lemonis offered a $250,000 reward on Twitter for anyone with information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for the incident.
"We can’t have our streets terrorized like this," Lemonis wrote, adding that he set up a special email address to help local businesses impacted by the explosion.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.