Nashville bombing suspect's girlfriend told police in 2019 he was making bombs

The girlfriend of the man who officials say set off a bomb in downtown Nashville on Christmas called police officers to the man's home last year, reporting that he had been working on constructing several bombs there.

According to the police incident report, the girlfriend told the Metro Nashville Police Department (via an attorney) that Anthony Quinn Warner frequently spoke about the military and bomb making.

Following the incident report, which was filed in August 2019, police went to Warner's home but "saw no evidence of a crime and had no authority to enter his home or fenced property," said a spokesperson for the police department.

Prior to the revelation of the incident report, Tennessee police had said that Warner was not an individual on their radar. One city council member called it "frustrating" that it took five days for the incident report to emerge in the aftermath of the bombing. 

In the early hours of Dec. 25, Warner is believed to have driven his explosive-packed RV into downtown Nashville and set off a blast that tore through several blocks of the area, taking down one building and igniting several fires. An AT&T transmission facility was flooded, causing outages in communication services for, among other things, hospitals and 911 dispatch centers. No one aside from Warner was killed in the attack.