Chilling police camera footage released Monday captures the uncomfortable calm before the Christmas bombing in Nashville – then the deafening explosion itself and the chaos in the minutes that followed.
The stunning footage was captured by the camera of Officer Michael Sipos, one of the first six officers on the scene to investigate the suspected camper who released an audio warning to evacuate around 6:30 am on Christmas morning.
The nearly 13-minute video begins with Sipos and his fellow cops urging the neighborhood residents to clean up – as the RV’s own ominous message echoes up and down a largely deserted Second Avenue.
“Your primary goal is to evacuate these buildings now,” you hear a female voice say on the RV’s automatic recording. “Do not get near this vehicle.”
Police can be heard responding to the nerve-racking scene.
“That’s so weird,” said Sipos. “That’s like something out of a movie.”
“Like ‘The Purge?”, May be asked for another agent, referring to the dystopian horror series.
Brenda Lee’s “Rockin ‘Around the Christmas Tree,” eerily undermining the tension, can be heard on the loudspeaker of a closed storefront as police pass by.
As he passed the RV, a police officer noted that the vehicle was just outside an important AT&T building.
“The building it stands next to is the one with all hard-line phone lines in the southeast,” the officer said.
“That’s right,” replied another. “Good place to put a bomb.”
Researchers have since theorized that the suicide bomber, Anthony Quinn Warner, may have attacked the building with the intention of paralyzing the service, possibly due to a paranoid fear of 5G cellular technology and surveillance.
Sipos eventually turned off Second Avenue and drove back to his marked car.
Seconds after Sipos threw open the trunk, the thunderous explosion can be heard in the distance, followed by a cacophony of car alarms.
Sipos calmly put on a protective vest, closed the trunk, and walked back to Second Avenue, the path now littered with broken glass and other shrapnel.
He returned to Second Avenue in time for his camera to shoot the RV in flames, and a handful of shaken locals emerged from buildings asking questions that the police had no answer to.
An intermittent blast could be heard in the minutes following the larger explosion, which an officer warned could be ammunition in the RV exploding in the heat.
We hear secondaries. It could be ammunition in the vehicle, ”said an officer on the police radio. “Don’t go out in the open. Don’t go out on Second Avenue. “
As medics and firefighters flooded the scene, more curious onlookers also asked what had happened.
“Dude, believe me, go that way,” Sipos said to a civilian, who pointed away from the scene of the blast.
The explosion killed Warner, injured three other people and caused massive collateral damage, including to telephone service in Tennessee and the South.
Investigators have said the 63-year-old IT expert appears to have acted alone.