A Girlfriend of Alleged Nashville Bomber Was Sent for a Psych Evaluation After Telling Police He Was Building Bombs a Year Ago

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A Girlfriend of Alleged Nashville Bomber Was Sent for a Psych Evaluation After Telling Police He Was Building Bombs a Year Ago
Image:Terry Wyatt (Getty Images)

In August of 2019, a girlfriend of Anthony Quinn Warner told Nashville police that she suspected Warner “was building bombs in the RV trailer at his residence.” The woman was then taken by ambulance for a psychological evaluation while authorities ignored the bomb information, claiming after the Christmas Day bombing that destroyed several blocks in downtown Nashville that Warner “was not on our radar.”

An attorney who represented both Warner and the woman in a civil case contacted authorities in August because he was concerned for her safety, according to The Tennessean, and when police arrived at her home, she was sitting on the porch with two unloaded weapons: “‘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.”

She went on to tell responding officers that Warner had been making comments about bombs and was potentially assembling explosives in his R.V., later identified to be the same one used in the explosion. The attorney, Raymond Throckmorton III, then told officers that he was concerned for her safety and supported her claims that Warner had talked frequently about explosives and the military, police reports from the time show. But now police say that they “saw no evidence of a crime and had no authority to enter his home or fenced property” in a statement about the incident, additionally claiming Throckmorton advised Warner to deny officers permission to search his R.V.

“I have no memory of that whatsoever,” Throckmorton told The Tennessean of MNPD’s claim that said they could not inspect the RV. “I didn’t represent him anymore. He wasn’t an active client. I’m not a criminal defense attorney.”

The report was then given to a “hazardous devices unit” and passed along to the FBI, though no follow-up appears to have come from the passing of the information. Meanwhile, both the police and Throckmorton say that the woman was experiencing a “mental health crisis” and sent her, not Warner, who did not answer the door for police according to the report, for a psychological evaluation.

In a pamphlet on domestic violence distributed by the Nashville District Attorney’s Office and the Metro Nashville Police, people who may be experiencing domestic abuse are encouraged to consider “access to guns, knives, or other lethal weapons” as a signifier that their lives are in danger, right above a number for the police department. A recent analysis by Bloomberg News found that in the U.S. “between 2014 and 2019, almost 60% of shooting incidents with four or more casualties involved an aggressor with a history of—or in the act of—domestic violence.”

While Warner was the only casualty of the Christmas Day bombing, federal agents did not search his home until December 26, 16 months after authorities were first told what they might find there.

 
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