According to investigators, investigators are examining whether a suicide bomber fearing 5G technology could be behind an explosion on Christmas morning in historic downtown Nashville that injured three people.
The blast, which caused extensive damage to dozens of buildings in Tennessee’s largest city, took place outside a facility owned by telecommunications company AT&T and caused or damaged services. of mobile telephony in several other cities.
Federal agents spent the weekend looking for a 63-year-old man who owned a motorhome similar to the one detectives believe was turned into a mobile bomb and driven to the scene.
Meanwhile, a Nashville television news channel reported that a person of interest, named Anthony Warner, from a southeastern suburb of the city, was working as an information technology consultant for a real estate company.
Steve Fridrich, a real estate agent who contacted the FBI after hearing the man’s name in a newsletter, told WSMV TV that federal agents had asked him if Warner was paranoid about 5G technology.
According to WSMV, sources close to the law enforcement investigation have said that among the various tips and lines of investigation was one that suggested that Warner incorporated a conspiracy theory that 5G technology was being used to to spy on Americans.
The FBI has not named any suspects, but it searched Warner’s home in the suburb of Antioch, Nashville, after bomb squad technicians cleared the property. Earlier, a spokesman said human remains were recovered from the site of the blast and the agency was not actively looking for any suspects.
DNA results on human tissue were soon expected.
Douglas Korneski, the special agent in charge of the FBI office in Memphis, said hundreds of officers went through a minimum of 500 tips and referrals and that it was too early to focus on any theory. in particular.
“It will only take us a while,” he said at a press conference Saturday night. “We are looking at all possible reasons [and] our research team is turning every stone ”.
Asked if the AT&T building could have been a possible target, Korneski said, “We’re looking at all the possible reasons that could be involved.”
On Sunday, the mayor of Nashville seemed to indicate that 5G conspiracy theory could be relevant to the investigation. “For all of us locally, there seems to be some connection to AT&T facilities and the bombing site,” John Cooper told CBS’s Face the Nation.
“That’s just a local vision, because it has to have something to do with infrastructure.”
Cooper has been in close contact with local and federal agencies conducting the investigation, and also with Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who has asked Donald Trump for a federal disaster statement.
Meanwhile, the president was playing golf in Florida on Sunday and the White House had not responded to Lee’s request.
The blast occurred in the early hours of Christmas morning as police officers, called to the scene by shooting reports, tried to evacuate local residents. A sinister recording that sounded from the RV with a woman’s voice, interspersed with snippets of music, warned that an explosion was imminent.
Two officers suffered non-life-threatening injuries as the blast brought black smoke and flames out of the heart of Nashville’s central tourist district.
Civilian and emergency communications networks in Nashville and several other cities, including Louisville, Knoxville, Birmingham, and Atlanta, were affected.
AT&T said Sunday it was redirecting service to other facilities as the company worked to restore its badly damaged building. The company said in a statement that it would provide resources to help recover the affected voice and data services and expects to have 24 additional trailers of disaster recovery equipment on site by the end of the day.
Ray Neville, president of technology at T-Mobile, another mobile network provider, said on Twitter: “We continue to see service outages. Restoration efforts continue 24 hours a day and we will keep you informed of progress. ”
The outages briefly landed flights to Nashville International Airport, although service had returned mainly to normal on Saturday night. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued flight restrictions around the airport until December 30.
Cooper signed a civil emergency declaration for the areas of Nashville affected by the blast, including a curfew.
The Associated Press contributed to this report