FBI to investigate Nashville bombing

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Downtown Nashville after the explosion Associated Press photo by Mark Humphrey

Police said a Friday explosion in downtown Nashville, Tenn., that injured at least three people was intentional. Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said officers early on Christmas morning came across a recreational vehicle blaring a recorded message that a bomb would explode in 15 minutes. The blast set cars on fire, mangled trees, and rocked a building that houses an AT&T telephone exchange, causing outages as far away as Kentucky.

Who staged the attack? U.S. Attorney Don Cochran on Sunday identified the suspect as Anthony Quinn Warner, a 63-year-old Nashville resident who died in the explosion. Federal and state authorities investigating the incident did not reveal his motive. The sheriff’s office in Rutherford County, Tenn., on Sunday charged James Turgeon, 33, with two felony counts of filing a false report and one count of evidence tampering after his truck allegedly played a recorded message similar to the Nashville bombing outside a church and a market.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read a report by Mindy Belz that includes her experience of being across the street from a terrorist bombing last year in Syria.

Editor's note: WORLD has updated this report since its initial posting.

Timothy Lamer

Tim is executive editor of WORLD Commentary. He previously worked for the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Va. His work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Weekly Standard.