Police report shows girlfriend of Nashville bomber warned he was 'building bombs' in his RV

Nashville buildings damaged by the Christmas Day explosion.
(Image credit: Terry Wyatt/Getty Images)

In August 2019, the girlfriend of Anthony Quinn Warner — the man police say blew up his RV in downtown Nashville on Christmas Day, damaging 41 buildings — told authorities that he was making bombs inside the vehicle, The Tennessean reports.

While the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has said Warner was "not on our radar," The Tennessean obtained a report from the Metro Nashville Police Department that says on Aug. 21, 2019, Warner's girlfriend told officers that he "was building bombs in the RV trailer at his residence," information that was then shared with the FBI.

Her attorney, Raymond Throckmorton III, had called police, and when officers arrived at the girlfriend's house in Antioch, Tennessee, they found her outside with two unloaded guns that she said belonged to Warner, Metro Nashville Police Department spokesman Don Aaron told The Tennessean. The police then went to Warner's home, where no one answered the door. Officers spotted his RV, but were unable to see inside of it. The report states they also noticed "several security cameras and wires attached to an alarm sign on the front door."

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Aaron told The Tennessean "the FBI reported back that they checked their holdings and found no records on Warner at all," and "at no time was there any evidence of a crime detected and no additional action was taken."

Throckmorton told The Tennessean on Tuesday that he called law enforcement because his client was afraid Warner was going to hurt her. He believes that "somebody, somewhere, dropped the ball," and with the information they had on Warner, police could have taken additional steps to prevent the bombing.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.