Nashville Bomber’s Girlfriend Told Police He Was Building A Bomb But They Called Her Crazy

Police officials have insisted that Anthony Quinn Warner, the man who set off a car bomb in the middle of Nashville on Christmas Day, was “not on our radar” prior to the attack.

However, Warner’s ex-girlfriend says that she warned police about him last year, and they had her psychologically evaluated instead of looking into the complaint.  

The woman, who has not been named to respect her privacy, notified police that Warner may have been building a bomb in his RV. The initial complaint was made in August of 2019, and the report has been confirmed by police, despite the fact that they still deny knowing that he was a potential problem. 

After telling police that Warner was building a bomb, they took her away in an ambulance for a mandatory psychological evaluation, without even investigating the very serious allegations that she had made. An attorney who represented both Warner and the woman also contacted the police and said that he was concerned for her safety.

When police arrived at her home, she was sitting on the porch with two unloaded weapons, which she said belonged to Warner.

“‘She related that the guns belonged to a ‘Tony Warner’ and that she did not want them in the house any longer,” MNPD spokesman Don Aaron said in a statement to The Tennessean.

She then told police that he had been talking about making bombs, and was tinkering with some type of device in his RV. Her allegations were backed up by the couple’s attorney, Raymond Throckmorton III, who had also heard Warner discuss bombs. A police report documented that officers were given this information by Warner’s ex-girlfriend and the attorney in August of 2019.

However, police said that they “saw no evidence of a crime and had no authority to enter his home or fenced property.” 

“At no time was there any evidence of a crime detected and no additional action was taken. No additional information about Warner came to the department’s or the FBI’s attention after August 2019,” Aaron said.

After police declined to search the property, they passed the report along to the FBI, who also took no action. Police on the scene determined that the woman was not in any danger from Warner, but was experiencing a “mental health crisis.”

If the police had initially taken the woman’s claims seriously, as they probably would have if she told them that drugs were being sold out of the RV, the attack would have likely never happened. Sadly, instead of doing something about an obviously dangerous situation, they assumed that the woman was crazy.

At least 8 people were reported to be injured in the explosion on Christmas day, but due to a warning that was being played from the RV, most residents in the area to evacuate before the blast occurred. While the motive is still unclear, the target of the explosion appears to be an AT&T building in the city. The blast resulted in power and telephone communication outages in large sections of the city.