By Steve Neavling
Police and the FBI were alerted to Nashville bombing suspect Anthony Quinn Warner about 16 months ago, when his girlfriend reported he was building explosives in his RV, according to a police report obtained by The Tennessean.
But it doesn’t appear that anything was done to stop Warner, who authorities say died in the Christmas Day explosion that tore through downtown Nashville and injured three people.
In August 2019, Warner’s girlfriend notified Nashville police that Warner “was building bombs in the RV trailer at his residence,” the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) report states.
The information was passed on to the FBI.
“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.
The woman’s attorney, Raymond Throckmorton III, told police that Warner “frequently talks about the military and bomb making,” the report states. The attorney added that Warner “knows what he is doing and is capable of making a bomb.”
Police went to Warner’s home to investigate but no one answered the door, and the RV was fenced off behind the house.
“They saw no evidence of a crime and had no authority to enter his home or fenced property,” MNPD spokesman Don Aaron told the Tennessean.
A day later, Nashville police forwarded the information to the FBI to check the bureau’s databases, Aaron said. Later in the day, “the FBI reported back that they checked their holdings and found no records on Warner at all,” Aaron said.
“Somebody, somewhere dropped the ball,” Throckmorton said.
Aaron responded that there was no evidence of wrongdoing at the time.
“At no time was there any evidence of a crime detected and no additional action was taken,” he said. “No additional information about Warner came to the department’s or the FBI’s attention after August 2019.”
