By Jamie Mcgee and Lucy Tompkins

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — With the authorities in Nashville now confident they know who set off a powerful explosion in downtown on Christmas morning, their attention turned Monday (28) to answering what may prove a far more difficult question: Why?

Investigators say Anthony Quinn Warner, 63, rigged his RV with explosives and parked it in a popular entertainment district, a place typically full of tourists and shoppers. But he also played a message warning people of an imminent explosion, which detonated at 6:30 a.m. on a holiday, a time when the area was basically deserted.

Body camera footage from one police officer at the scene captured the force of the blast and the confusion that followed.

The explosion killed Warner, injured three others and caused structural damage to at least 41 buildings in a historic part of downtown Nashville. One building collapsed from the damage, and some residents were displaced by the blast and had to stay in hotels or with friends. But officials say the loss of life could have been far greater, had the explosion occurred at a different time.

“It does appear that the intent was more destruction than death,” David Rausch, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, said in an interview Monday on the ‘Today’ show.

At a news conference Monday, Rausch said investigators were interviewing relatives and neighbours of Warner, including his mother.

“Through all of that, we hope to get an answer,” Rausch said, noting that the task was made far more difficult without the chance to speak with Warner.

“We don’t know for sure that we’ll ever get to the complete answer, because obviously that individual is no longer with us,” he said.

The body camera footage shows several officers walking past the parked RV at 6:25 a.m. as a recording of a woman’s voice bellowed monotone warnings to “evacuate now” and “stay clear from the vehicle”.

One officer said it seemed like something out of a movie.

“Like ‘The Purge’?” another officer responded.

The officer wearing the body camera then turned a corner and walked to a police cruiser. Shortly after, the RV exploded, a deafening eruption that ignited car alarms and scattered debris across the street. Broken glass glittered like stars on the pavement. Black smoke billowed toward the sky.

Before the explosion, Warner had not been on law enforcement’s radar, Rausch said. The one arrest in his criminal record was for marijuana possession in 1978, when he was 21.

This meant that tips from members of the public were “absolutely key” in identifying Warner as the suspect, Rausch said. From there, investigators were able to find images on Google Earth that showed an RV in his driveway, which led them to his home and to eventually comparing DNA from a hat and a pair of gloves that belonged to him.

“We are very proud of the work that we’ve done by our team to make that match so quickly,” Rausch said.

Investigators were still working to identify what materials Warner used to make the bomb, he added. Rausch and the Justice Department both said they could not speak to whether his decision to park outside an AT&T building was intentional or coincidental.

On the body camera footage, one police officer noted that the RV was parked next to a building that houses phone lines for the region.

The explosion damaged the AT&T building, causing widespread service outages for several days and affecting parts of Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama. Communication was also hindered in 20 or more 911 call centres, according to Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee.

AT&T was still working to return service to all its customers Monday, but the majority of services had been restored, the company said in a statement.

From the beginning, officials have grappled with whether to call the explosion an act of terrorism. On Friday (25), in the hours after the blast, aides to Mayor John Cooper consulted with the city’s legal director, Robert Cooper, a former state attorney general, about whether to use the term before determining that the blast had not met the legal definition, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

Ed Yarborough, a former US attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, agreed with the assessment.

“Terrorism as we define it in the modern age involves the killing of innocent citizens to put fear into the general population for political purposes or religious or whatever,” said Yarborough, who is now in private practice in Nashville. “The guy obviously went out of his way to try to avoid the killing of innocent people, so that’s the opposite of what a terrorist typically does.”

By late Monday morning, some sense of normalcy had returned to downtown. The area that had been blocked off by investigators was narrowed, and light traffic and tourists returned to nearby streets, an encouraging sign for businesses already hurting because of the coronavirus pandemic.

-New York Times