A new detail has emerged about when a Nashville police officer first realized he’d previously handled a case involving the Christmas morning bomber.
The department now says that a member of its bomb squad went with the FBI to the Antioch home of Anthony Warner on Christmas night.
On that trip, Officer Kevin Pollard realized he had been to the same home before. He began pulling information about the prior case and informed Sgt. Daniel Walz the next morning, Saturday, Dec. 26.
The department is saying higher-ranking leaders were not informed at that point. It wasn’t until the next day that police say Chief John Drake was informed.
That evening, a reporter asked the top police spokesperson, Don Aaron, about records of a visit to Warner’s home. The reporter asked again the following evening, Sunday, Dec. 27, with more specificity about the potential of a 2019 case involving Warner.
Drake has largely defended officers who investigated Warner in August 2019. At that time, they’d been told by the man’s girlfriend that he was building a bomb in his RV and encouraged to investigate by a local attorney who knew both Warner and the woman. Police never made contact.
That information went public the night of Tuesday, Dec. 30, and the chief took questions the following afternoon.
The latest timeline, provided by police on Wednesday, comes in response to members of the Metro Council, who have been asking why police didn’t do more in 2019, as well as when exactly police realized that the bomber had been on the department’s radar.
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