Girlfriend warned Nashville police Anthony Warner was building bomb a year ago

NASHVILLE — Sixteen months before Anthony Quinn Warner's RV exploded in downtown Nashville on Christmas morning, police visited his home in Antioch after his girlfriend reported that he was making bombs in the vehicle.

On Friday, 63-year-old Quinn blew up a city block, police say, about 6:30 a.m. on Second Avenue outside an AT&T switch facility. The bomb caused massive destruction to 41 downtown buildings and crippled telecommunication systems throughout the Southeast over the weekend.

In the aftermath, The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said Warner was "not on our radar" prior to the bombing. But a Metro Nashville Police Department report from August 2019 shows that local and federal authorities were aware of alleged threats he had made.

No actions appear to have been taken to stop Warner, a slender 5-foot-8, 135-pound man who died in the explosion, which injured three others.

On Aug. 21, 2019, the girlfriend told Nashville police that Warner "was building bombs in the RV trailer at his residence," the MNPD report states. Nashville police then forwarded the information to the FBI.

Officers were called to the home of Warner's girlfriend, roughly a mile and a half from Warner, who lived at 115 Bakertown Lane.

Police were called by the woman's attorney, Raymond Throckmorton III, who was concerned about comments she had made. When they arrived, they found her sitting on the porch with two unloaded guns nearby.

"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.

While at the house, the woman told police about the bomb comments Warner had made.

Throckmorton, who said he represented both Warner and the woman, told officers Warner "frequently talks about the military and bomb making."

Warner "knows what he is doing and is capable of making a bomb," the attorney said to the officers, according to the report.

Police then went to Warner's home, but he didn't answer the door after they knocked several times.

Officers saw his RV behind the house, but the vehicle was fenced off and police were unable to see inside of it. While there, police noted that there were "several security cameras and wires attached to a alarm sign on the front door."

The officers notified supervisors and detectives about the incident.

"They saw no evidence of a crime and had no authority to enter his home or fenced property," Aaron said of officers' unsuccessful attempt to make contact with Warner or look inside the RV.

The department's hazardous devices unit was given a copy of the report.

The next day, Nashville police sent the report and identifying information about Warner to the FBI to check their databases, Aaron said in a statement to The Tennessean.

Later that day, Aaron said, "the FBI reported back that they checked their holdings and found no records on Warner at all."

Darrell DeBusk, a spokesperson for the FBI, told The Tennessean Tuesday night the inquiry was a standard agency-to-agency record check.

Then on Aug. 28, 2019, the Department of Defense reported back that "checks on Warner were all negative."

During the week of August 26, 2019, police called Throckmorton, who declined to allow police to interview Warner or go on Warner's property, the FBI told The Tennessean.

In a statement Tuesday night from Aaron, he said officers recalled Throckmorton saying Warner “did not care for the police,” and that Throckmorton would not allow Warner to give consent to officers to conduct a visual inspection of the RV.

Throckmorton did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday night.

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

Aaron reported that the ATF also had no information on Warner.

Warner's only prior arrest occurred more than 40 years earlier, in January 1978, for marijuana possession.

Reach Natalie Allison at nallison@tennessean.com. Follow her on Twitter at @natalie_allison.

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