A woman who said she was in a relationship with the man who set off the Christmas Day explosion in Nashville told local police more than a year ago that he was building bombs.
The Associated Press reports the Metro Nashville Police Department received a tip from an attorney who represented Pamela Perry—the former girlfriend of domestic terrorist Anthony Warner—on Aug. 21, 2019. At that time, Perry warned police that Warner was "building bombs in the RV trailer at his residence."
Police visited Perry's home that same day after attorney Raymond Throckmorton said she had been making suicidal threats. Upon officers' arrival at the property, Perry is said to have had two unloaded guns next to her on the porch. Those guns, she said, belonged to Warner and she no longer wanted them inside her home.
According to Throckmorton, Perry was worried about her safety at the time. Throckmorton told responding officers that Warner was known to make frequent references to bomb-making and the military. Police were also informed that Warner "knows what he is doing and is capable of making a bomb," per Throckmorton.
These accounts indicated Warner was more than capable of making a bomb, but when police later attempted to enter his home, he did not answer the door. Claiming to have seen "no evidence of a crime" and lacking "authority to enter his home or fenced property," police did not forcibly make their way inside. Despite these records, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said earlier this week that Warner was not on authorities' radar.
News of this 2019 near-encounter with police has brought widespread criticism to Nashville police and related authorities, with many pointing out how far officers are willing to go in order to intervene on, say, a nonviolent drug-related case while showing none of that energy when bomb-making is the issue.
Warner died in the explosion on Dec. 25. Thankfully, no one else was seriously injured. The RV bomb caused a massive AT&T outage and damaged dozens of buildings in the downtown area.
