Video shows Nashville police avoid narrow RV bomb

New footage shows a Nashville police officer walking about a block from an RV, seconds before it exploded in downtown on Christmas Day, injuring the occupant and three others.

The footage was released Sunday hours after officials identified the person who died during the blast as 63-year-old Anthony Quinn Warner.

In addition to injuring three people, the apparent suicide bombing seriously damaged nearby buildings and affected cell phone networks.

Officials said they did not immediately know what Warner’s motive was, and therefore the incident had not yet been classified as domestic terrorism.

“When we judge an event for domestic terrorism … it has to be linked to an ideology,” said Doug Korneski, the FBI’s special agent in charge of the Memphis office. ‘It is the use of force or violence to promote a political [or] social ideology – we have not yet linked it to it. ‘

Warner apparently acted alone, and there is no indication that there are other suspects.

One person, who had previously hired Warner as a computer technician, told WSMV-TV that the FBI asked him if Warner was paranoid about 5G, a technology that has become a focus of conspiracy theories, such as the QAnon massacre. He said Warner never mentioned it, and he was unaware of any ideology he had.

Nashville Mayor John Cooper told CBS on Sunday Face the Nation that the incident was apparently an attack on infrastructure.

“For all of us locally, it feels like there has to be a connection to the AT&T facility and the site of the bombing,” Cooper said. “You know, and it’s a little bit of local insight, because it has to have something to do with the infrastructure.”

At a news conference Sunday, Nashville police chief John Drake praised the six officers who evacuated civilians from the area after the RV played a warning message that it would blow up within 15 minutes.

“They did not think about their own lives; they did not think about protecting themselves,” Drake said. “They thought of the citizens of Nashville and protected them.”

Between the broadcast of the warning message, the RV was playing music, one of the officers, James Luellen, told reporters.

“What I specifically … remembered was ‘Downtown, where the lights are shining brightly,'” Luellen said. Later, the ATF agent I spoke to pulled it up, and it was ‘Downtown’ by Petula Clark, a specific song being played. “

Another officer, James Wells, recalled the terrifying minutes before the bomb went off, saying he was back in his car to get armor, and then started walking to the RV again.

‘I literally hear God tell me to turn around and go look [Officer] Top layer … and then the music stops and when I walk back to Topping now, I just see orange, and then I hear a loud surge. ‘

Wells said the explosion was so intense that he nearly lost his footing.

“[As] “I started stumbling, I’m just telling myself to stay on your feet and stay alive, ‘Wells said.

Topping also recalls the moment of the explosion, and how she ran to Wells and took cover in a door with him.

“I’ve never grabbed anyone so hard in my life,” Topping said. “I’ll never smash the windows after the explosion around me – it looks like a big prop from a movie scene, while all the glass breaks at once.”

In a Fox News interview Monday, the Tennessee government, Bill Lee, thanked the response officers for evacuating people from the scene.

“When they talk about putting their lives on the line, that’s exactly what they did that morning,” Lee said. “They ended up in that situation and saved so many lives.”

Lee also said he spoke to President Trump on Sunday to request emergency relief funding for small business owners whose businesses were destroyed in the blast.

“Small business owners have had a very difficult year to begin with,” Lee said. “If you look at the damage down there … I see business owners with a new battle.”