Did 5G technology, internet conspiracies lead to paranoia in Nashville bomb suspect?
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) — One of Anthony Warner’s neighbors told The Associated Press that the world would remember him. The right thing is for the world to remember the police officers who heroically evacuated the area before the Christmas morning bombing. Still, investigators continue their search for a motive.
People who were interviewed by the FBI said the federal investigators asked him, was Tony Warner paranoid about 5G spying on him? No one FOX 17 News spoke to knew if he was or not, but he was on rocky ground with his family, including his mother who sued him last year.
Warner’s brother Charles died in 2018. Warner had power of attorney over his residential property on Bakertown Road – where his mother now lives. Warner decided to transfer his mom’s share of the property to himself, then to a woman with East Tennessee ties named Michelle Swing.
Swing later gave the house back to Christine Lane, Warner’s mother, after a lawsuit was filed.
RELATED: AP: Neighbor: Bombing suspect said 'Nashville and the world is never going to forget me'
FOX 17 News spoke to a family member on Monday who said the family is shaken and scared. They said Warner once had an alarm company. He’d worked with electronics and phones, and did freelance work on computers.
“It’s shocking,” neighbor Kevin Douglas said. “That your own neighbor did something like that. It’s shocking.”
Douglas said he’d see Warner at the mailbox and around his home. But he rarely saw anyone visit Warner at his house.
“I have seen them out in the backyard, but I haven’t seen them doing anything suspicious,” Douglas said.
Warner, who has been described as a recluse, had a talent for interacting with very few people. Records show he never even voted.
But after his father’s death in 2011 and his brother’s death in 2018, Warner separated almost entirely from most of the family.
RELATED: How the Tennessee Highway Patrol played a key role in identifying Nashville bomber
His father, Charles, who went by ‘Popeye,’ worked at Bellsouth and AT&T, and the family member FOX 17 News spoke to said he enjoyed that job. It’s the only connection he can think of about why Warner would have chosen the 2nd Avenue location.
“That is still being followed up on,” Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch said. “Details are still worked out to determine if that was a motive.”
With a father that worked at AT&T, a career in tech and the location of the bombing, investigators asked if 5G technology, the source of many internet conspiracies, led to paranoia in Warner.
An odd life — now the only clues as to why — he blew himself up and endangered so many on Christmas morning.
Warner has one arrest to his name. It was more than 30 years ago for possession of marijuana.
Officials tell FOX 17 News Warner’s mother is cooperating with police.
