Nashville Mayor John Cooper called the Christmas Day bombing that rocked the city and caused service outages a deliberate infrastructure attack.
In an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation set to air Sunday, Cooper said that based on where the RV rigged to explode was positioned, the bombing has “got to do something with the infrastructure.”
The explosion left at least three people hospitalized and 41 businesses damaged — perhaps most significantly an AT&T facility adjacent to where the RV that exploded was positioned. The blast caused outages in parts of Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky and affected services ranging from residential phones to 911 services.
“The damage on Second Avenue is not dissimilar than what the tornado inflicted on Nashville and bigger parts of Nashville rather than just on one street. And so we’re going to need to get this rebuilt,” Cooper said. “We’re going to need help, and we may need some help in hardening our infrastructure.”
“I consider this a serious, intentional act on American infrastructure, and I don’t know anybody who would do that except a terrorist,” @RepJimCooper says to @andersoncooper just now of the bombing outside Nashville AT&T facility.
— Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) December 25, 2020
Cooper said AT&T was working “very hard” to restore service to the affected areas but could not say when operators expected it to be completed.
The mayor also said that authorities do not believe there is an ongoing threat to the city.
“I feel confident in repeating what the authorities — what the investigators said yesterday to Nashville, that they think that the threat is over, that Nashville is safe, that there aren’t any other bombs,” Cooper said. “I think they wouldn’t have said that unless they were very confident that that is true.”
Authorities identified at least one person of interest on Saturday but did not publicly confirm a name. CBS News reported the person of interest to be 63-year-old Anthony Warner. Images from Google Maps street view show an RV similar to the one police identified at the scene of the crime parked at the residency that property records show was connected to Warner.
CBS and CNN have reported, citing investigators and law enforcement sources, that the suspect was likely killed in the explosion.
Investigators have yet to comment on potential motivations behind the explosion, but speculation has surfaced that it could have been because of paranoia regarding 5G technology. A real estate agent named Steve Fridrich told Newsweek that he contacted the FBI about a man he previously worked with named Tony Warner. Fridrich has said the FBI asked him if Warner was paranoid about 5G technology being used to spy on people.
Warner reportedly worked for Fridich’s company, Fridrich & Clark Realty office, as “contract laborer for computer consulting for the company,” according to the Tennessean.
Investigators are also reportedly looking into whether the previous employment of Warner’s father could have been a motivation. Charles Warner worked for BellSouth before he died in 2011. BellSouth was merged into AT&T in 2006.
“The fact that the father worked in the same company is definitely [something] lead investigators would pursue,” a senior law enforcement official said.
