The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department has released a police officer’s bodycam footage that documents the moments leading up to the Christmas bombing that rocked the city’s downtown, leaving eight people injured and several buildings damaged.
Officials have identified the suspected bomber as Anthony Q. Warner, a resident of the Nashville suburb of Antioch.
The almost 13-minute video shows officers surveying the area, carrying out a pre-bomb evacuation and speculating over what the threat could be. The RV’s warning can be heard playing as the officers walk by, moments before the explosion occurred.
The footage, titled “Officer Sipos’ Body Camera Footage, 12/25/2020,” was released on Monday, three days after the bombing took place.
At the 6:14 a.m., the police officers are shown evacuating a person located in a nearby alley, informing him that he’s “not in trouble” but that “something serious is happening down the road.”
The footage then switches to 6:25 a.m., at which point the officers walk by the RV as it blares a looping messaging warning people to evacuate the area and not approach the vehicle.
“That’s so weird,” one officer is heard saying. “That’s like something out of a movie.”
“Like, ‘The Purge’?” his counterpart asks.
“Yeah,” he responds.
An officer then remarks that the AT&T building the RV is parked next to is the building that “houses all the hardlines for phones throughout the southeast.”
“Makes sense, it’s probably a bomb,” another officer says in response.
The police officers then turn a street corner, out of sight of the RV, and a request for fire to be on standby is heard. Almost immediately after, the explosion goes off in the distance.
The officers return to the scene, helping to evacuate pedestrians as car horns and fire alarms blare in the background.
Officers instruct pedestrians, including one man who runs by with his loved one thrown over his back, to go as far from the blast site as possible.
David Rausch, the director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, told The Associated Press on Monday, “It does appear that the intent was more destruction than death, but again that’s all still speculation at this point as we continue in our investigation with all our partners.”