The suicide bombing in Nashville rocked the country Christmas day.
According to police, 63-year-old domestic terrorist Anthony Quinn Warner drove his RV onto 2nd Avenue North in Nashville, Tennessee where he initiated the explosion of his vehicle at 6:30 in the morning.
The RV "broadcast a computerized female voice repeatedly warning that a bomb would explode in minutes and directing people to evacuate" along with playing Petula Clark's "Downtown."
A few Nashville police officers are being hailed as heroes for taking the warnings seriously and evacuating the immediate area, resulting in zero casualties from the suicide bombing.
Among them is Officer Amanda Topping.
Topping—who was on the phone with her wife just minutes before she began evacuations—said she "[had] a feeling, 'Something's not right'" as she listened to the RV broadcast its evacuation message.
"I was standing there by my car, and I heard [another officer] say that music just came on. I was about to get on the radio and say, 'I know it's not my place, but everybody's getting out of the buildings, right?' I was getting really antsy… I had talked to my wife again and told her things were really strange."
"I'll never forget the windows shattering after the blast all around me," she continued.
"It kind of looked like a big prop from a movie scene, all the glass breaking at once."
"The first thing I could so was [get on the radio], 'There's been an explosion, send multiple medics.' I was so scared I had just lost my entire detail. Luckily, I heard everybody on the radio, and knew everybody was alive. I was happy to hear nobody else was seriously injured."
Following the explosion, Topping said she was scared her colleagues had been injured or killed, but thankfully, once the smoke cleared, she saw there were no serious injuries.
The rest of the detail were also incredibly shaken by the explosion.
"I don't think Christmas will ever be the same for any of us again," said one officer.
Warner is the only person of interest at present in the investigation into the blast.
In a country where the basic human rights of LGBTQ people are under constant attack from a major political party, having recognized and identifiable heroes is important. Thank you, Officer Topping.
