NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Police officers on Sunday provided harrowing details of responding to a Christmas morning 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.”
Anthony Quinn Warner
The five responding officers gave their accounts of what happened as investigators continued to chip away at the motive of the bombing of a recreational vehicle that blew up on a mostly deserted street just after it issued a recorded warning advising people 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.
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.
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: “We’re 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.
Balsamo and Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press photographer Mark Humphrey in Nashville contributed to this report.
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Well other than milking this for all they can, we have little information from the ‘authorities’. It does sound like this guy chose to commit suicide in a very spectacular and destructive way. It also sounds like he did not want to hurt anyone in the process. I am wondering if propane in concentration contained in a box that size could have caused that much damage. A while back I saw pictures of what was left of a house after a propane explosion. There were only splinters left. They have not mentioned if explosive residue has been found. Putting together high explosives in a volume to do that much damage to the motor home and other structures close by would be very hard to do. On the other hand, turning the range burners on, waiting a while, and striking a match, would be very easy if you also wished to die at the same time. Sadly Christmas is a time of year that some people find depressing. This guy seems to have planned it for some time, judging by the property title transfers. Being right in front of AT&T sounds like he was not too happy with them as well. My guess would be a very depressed man decided to take himself out and make a statement in the process. Just as simple as that.
I wonder, if the reason he DID alert the cops to evacuate, was cause he DIDN’T wish to get branded a terrorist…
God Bless the police (those that don’t abuse their power, like the FBI under Comey) for all they do for us. The defund the police radicals can get the you know what, out of our Country.
It is standard procedure that when a bomb goes off detonated possibly by a cell phone they shut down all cell phone activity within a very large area of the state., which can also effect Satillite TV. The way our “Progressive” society is now having its fabrics torn apart by men and political parties of discontent, dont rely on your cell phone or laptop to get you by, but put in a land line and cable TV. Hundreds of businesses and remote learning centers were blacked out for miles. Don;t buy the nonsense that AT&T was the target and cause of the communication disruptions.
First let me say that I normally agree with you 100%. This time, not so much. They found body fragments. He was inside when it went off, no cell phone remote. If it is possible to generate an explosion of this size with the volume of propane gas in that motor home, then it is just a simple suicide, very likely targeting ATT. Timmy used ANFO which was commonly used by farmers to blow stumps and the like. It was easy to make and very powerful. It also is hard to detonate, but the AN part is no longer easy to obtain, and all common commercial explosives, including premixed ANFO are also very hard to obtain. I don’t know anymore than anyone else, but this looks very simple. He wanted to die, he did not want to hurt anyone else, he wanted to be remembered, and basically he accomplished all three. Time to move along.
Just imagine how much worse it could have been, HAD THOSE Defund the cops nutters, had gotten their way in Nashville..
We throw hero around way too much. What those police did was their job. Was it brave, you bet it was. They had no way to know how big the blast would be, yet they did as they had been trained to do. They tried to see that the area was evacuated. They could have done like that Florida school cop who hid behind a concrete pillar, but they actually did what 99% of the police officers have always done in a case like this. The tried to make sure anyone in the area headed out of harms way. Good job officers, and a fine example of why we fund our police.
Well it would seem he likely did manufacture explosives and had been doing so for some time. It is almost impossible to manufacture a large volume of high explosives after Oklahoma City. But it is possible to make a small amount, or a medium amount over time. Given enough time and motivation, it is completely possible to do what he did. He kept a fairly low profile, and did not seem to fit the typical profile even when reported. Law enforcement did look into a report, but without any proof, they did not go further. In other words they behaved as law abiding law enforcement should. I know I sure as **** don’t want a SWAT teem busting down my door just because someone makes an accusation against me with nothing to validate it with.