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Girlfriend told police Nashville man was building bombs year before explosion

30 December 2020
 Dan Ackermann

The girlfriend of Anthony Warner, the man who is believed to have detonated the bomb in Nashville on Christmas Day, warned police officers in August 2019 that he "was building bombs in the RV trailer at his residence," according to police reports obtained by The Tennessean.

Why it matters: Although the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said Warner "was not on our radar" before the explosion, the report from the Metro Nashville Police Department "shows that local and federal authorities were aware of alleged threats he had made," The Tennessean writes.

Details: Raymond Throckmorton, attorney to Warner's girlfriend Pamela Perry, had called authorities on Aug. 21 and said she was having a mental health crisis while sitting on her front porch with firearms, which she later said belonged to Warner.

  • Perry told police at the time that Warner "frequently talks about the military and bomb making" and "knows what he is doing and is capable of making a bomb," according to the report.
  • Police then went to Warner's home and saw the RV from the outside, but were unable to enter the residence. The report said authorities "saw no evidence of a crime and had no authority to enter his home."
  • A day after the officers' visit, they sent the report and Warner's information to the FBI to check its database, but did not find any records on him. An FBI spokesperson told The Tennessean that was "a standard agency-to-agency record check."
  • "No additional information about Warner came to the department's or the FBI's attention after August 2019," a Nashville police spokesperson told The Tennessean.

The big picture: An investigation into the Christmas Day explosion is still underway. Federal prosecutors and Nashville police have not yet uncovered a motive.

  • Officials said they do not believe anyone else was involved in the bombing, which left three people injured.
  • The detonation came from an RV located in downtown Nashville, which played a recording ahead of the explosion telling people to evacuate the area. It then began playing Petula Clark's 1964 song, "Downtown."

Go deeper: Authorities name Anthony Warner as Nashville bomber, say he died in blast

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.