A closing catastrophe to 2020

After the devastating bombing, the city of Nashville moves to rebuild both mentally and physically.

After the devastating bombing, the city of Nashville moves to rebuild both mentally and physically.

James Kuhns, Managing Editor of Podcasting

Every new month of 2020 seemed to bring a new catastrophe with it, and as the year crawled to a close people across the United States hoped to enjoy a stress free holiday season. Unfortunately, this aspiration could not come true after a bomb carrying RV detonated in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, on December 25, 2020.  

For the business owners and residents living on Nashville’s famous 2nd street, Christmas day began like any other. At 5:30 AM, as the city began to wake, the morning silence was pierced by a countdown from a parked RV that urged citizens to leave the vicinity. The noise managed to wake up those closest to the RV. After hearing the warning, Betsy Williams called the police and reported what she heard. 

After almost an hour, at 6:30 AM on Christmas Day, 2020, an explosion rocked downtown Nashville. Within 15 minutes, most of the major city streets had been locked down, and three people were transported to nearby hospitals after sustaining non-life threatening injuries from the blast. By mid-day, the police and federal agents dispatched to the scene had linked the bombing to the suspicious RV and deemed the explosion to be intentional.

The bombing did not only affect those in the blast’s radius, as the explosion damaged the AT&T regional telecommunications hub, leaving millions of people without cell phone service in states as far away as Missouri and Illinois. News spread quickly, and many took to the internet to share their prayers with those hurt by the tragedy. With so much national response, two questions still remained: who was behind the bombing and why did they do it?

After extensive DNA testing and tips from the suspects ex-girlfriend, federal authorities identified Anthony Warner as the Nashville bomber. Having died in the explosion, Warner’s motives have remained unclear, but as Nashville recovers, people across the US began to worry about the spontaneousness of the attack. 

LFA Senior Rohan Miglani, who heard the news only an hour after the explosion, was “shocked and unsure of what to think.” The uncertainty surrounding Warner’s motives left Miglani feeling “uneasy” and worried for the possibility of a similar attack in Chicago. As more information surfaces on this case, it is only a matter of time before we truly understand the reasons for this non-fatal yet traumatizing bombing on American soil.