Nashville Police on Monday released video footage recorded on a body cam worn by officer Michael Sipos, who was at the scene on the day of the explosion in the city that involved an RV.
The video shows a group of officers telling people to leave the area until an explosion is heard at roughly four minutes into the recording.
“Officer Michael Sipos, 1 of the officers who responded to 2nd Ave N Christmas Day in the minutes prior to the explosion, had been issued a body camera just days earlier. Here is what he saw & heard,” the Metro Nashville Police Department wrote on Twitter.
Authorities identified 63-year-old Anthony Quinn Warner as the man suspected of detonating a bomb inside an RV that killed himself, injured three other people, and damaged dozens of buildings in Nashville on Christmas Day.
The recording from Sipos’s camera captures officers walking past the RV parked across the street as the recorded warning blares.
“That’s so weird. That’s like something straight out of a movie,” Sipos said as the vehicle blared a message saying “evacuate now.”
The officers are then seen helping people evacuate after the thunderous blast off-camera. Car alarms and sirens wail as a voice on the dispatcher calls for all available personnel and a roll call and people stumble through the downtown area littered with glass.
Investigators are analyzing Warner’s belongings collected during the investigation, including a computer and a portable storage drive, and continue to interview witnesses as they try to identify a motive for the explosion, a law enforcement official said. A review of his financial transactions also uncovered purchases of potential bomb-making components, the official said.
Warner had recently given away a vehicle and told the person he gave it to that he had been diagnosed with cancer, though it is unclear whether he indeed had cancer, the official said. Investigators used some items collected from the vehicle, including a hat and gloves, to match Warner’s DNA, and DNA was taken from one of his family members, the official said.
Warner also apparently gave away his home in Antioch, a Nashville suburb, to a Los Angeles woman a month before the bombing. A property record dated Nov. 25 indicates Warner transferred the home to the woman in exchange for no money after living there for decades. The woman’s signature is not on that document.
Warner had worked as a computer consultant for Nashville real estate agent Steve Fridrich, who told the Associated Press in a text message that Warner had said he was retiring earlier this month.
Officials said Warner had not been on their radar before Christmas. A law enforcement report released Monday showed that Warner’s only arrest was for a 1978 marijuana-related charge.
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