Nashville Bomber’s Girlfriend Warned Police About Him In 2019

Anthony Warner’s girlfriend told police that he “was building bombs in the RV trailer at his residence,” according to a police report filed in August 2019.

Yet the report indicates Nashville police did not make contact with Warner after the incident. And despite having this report on Warner in their database, police did not share it with the public until Tuesday evening — days after Warner drove his RV to Second Avenue and detonated a bomb out of the vehicle, killing himself and injuring at least seven people.

More: View the 2019 incident report.

Whether law enforcement had any warning about the bomb beforehand has been a frequent inquiry since the explosion. On Sunday, the head of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation told reporters that Warner was not on the radar before the bombing, and on the evening of the blast, Nashville Police Chief John Drake said no threat had been made against the city in advance.

However, the 2019 police report, first obtained by The Tennessean and NewsChannel 5, shows that officers responded that summer to a call at the home of Warner’s girlfriend, who told them that Warner was building bombs. The woman’s attorney, Raymond Throckmorton, was also present and told police that Warner “frequently talks about the military and bomb making,” according to the report. “[Throckmorton] stated he believes that the suspect knows what he is doing and is capable of making a bomb.”

When police knocked on Warner’s door, they received no answer, according to the report. They saw an RV in the yard and “several security cameras with wires attached to an alarm sign on the front door.”

In an email to WPLN News, a police spokesperson says the report was sent to the department’s bomb squad and the FBI. The FBI checked their databases “and found no records on Warner at all … the FBI reported that Department of Defense checks on Warner were all negative.”

WPLN News has reached out to the FBI for comment.

The police department’s bomb squad also called Throckmorton, who had identified himself as Warner’s and the woman’s attorney, a police spokesperson said. “The recollection of that call is that Warner did not care for the police, and that Throckmorton would not allow his client to permit a visual inspection of the RV.”

Police did not take additional action.

But Throckmorton recalls the follow-up conversation with police differently. He tells NewsChannel 5 he was not representing Warner at the time.

“I certainly would never have told them not to check it out when I’m the one who said go the hell over there and find out what’s going on,” he told the station.