When he arrived, he heard no shots. While he was investigating, Officer Brenna Hosey came to help him.
“As soon as she got out of the car, the RV started making an announcement almost immediately,” Luellen, a three-year veteran of the Nashville Police Department, told reporters on Sunday. Somewhere along the lines of, don’t quote me exactly, but, ‘There’s a big bomb in this vehicle. Your primary goal is to evacuate. ”
“I wasn’t sure what I was hearing, so I looked at Officer Hosey to verify we heard the same thing,” he said. “And then it started again.”
Not long after that, that camper would explode and knock over Luellen and damage dozens of companies and in which three people were injured – but not before Nashville agents went door to door to keep local residents out of harm’s way.
At a press conference Sunday, five of those six agents gave a firsthand account of that morning, what they saw and what they experienced – from the grisly reports broadcast by the RV and their efforts to save lives, to the shock of the explosion and the fear of their fellow officers.
“This will tie us together forever, for the rest of our lives,” Officer Wells said.
‘We’re going as fast as we can’
After the message from the RV began to play, Luellen said he was Sgt. Miller, who said to get everyone out of there. Luellen has requested all available units.
“We knew it was serious from the tone of his voice,” said Wells, who was with Topping.
“We got there as soon as we could, not knowing the RV was the vehicle in question,” he said. “At the time we actually drove right in front of it.”
When the agents arrived on the scene and waited for the bomb threat to arrive, Sipos and Hosey entered an apartment building and started knocking on doors. Sgt. Miller also arrived and told the officers to get their vehicles into a more strategic position before joining the others to go door to door. Topping, meanwhile, stayed on the street to keep pedestrians away.
“Between myself and all the other agents who knock, I believe we have been in contact with six or seven families,” said Sipos.
Soon, the message from the RV turned into a countdown, announcing that the vehicle would detonate.
“At this point we heard the 14-minute announcement to detonate,” Hosey said, “so we’re going as fast as we can.”
After they cleared the first building, the officers began making their way south, Sipos said. They made it into another apartment building but did not make contact with anyone inside.
Luellen informed them that the RV message had changed again and a song was now playing. He said an ATF agent later helped Petula Clark identify him as “Downtown.”
Soon the weather changed, the officers said. Detonation was three minutes away.
‘I literally hear God’
The RV had covered all the windows, said Luellen, who had searched outside for a license plate but found none. At one point, Wells said he saw a camera above the RV’s rearview mirror.
“It felt like whoever was behind it was watching,” he said. ‘It felt strange to me. All the cops you hear about the ghostly senses, about the hair that stood up on your neck. Everything that went through my body. ‘
Wells went back to his vehicle to retrieve heavy plates for extra protection. He started walking back to the camper, he said, then, “I literally hear God tell me to turn around and see Topping.”
Topping walked to the others too, but she said something told her to change direction and walk to Wells instead.
Then she said, “I just saw the biggest flames I’ve ever seen, the biggest explosion. I just saw orange and … felt the heat, the wave.”
“I’ll never forget that the windows around me broke after the explosion,” she said. “It looked like a big prop from a movie scene, with all the glass breaking at once.”
Luellen, who had just told a man who walked his dog to get to safety, said he was knocked to the ground by the explosion. Sipos, pulling equipment from his patrol car, was thrown into his trunk. Hosey was thrown forward, but caught herself.
Topping ran straight to Wells. They grabbed hold of each other and ducked into a doorway for safety.
“I was so scared that I just lost my whole detail,” she said.
‘Christmas will never be the same again’
Everyone was fine, although Wells had temporary hearing loss in one of his ears, he said. Paramedics wanted to take him to the hospital, but when he learned that three people had been injured, he said, he told them to take the injured.
But there was still work to be done.
Luellen, meanwhile, checked the man with his dog, before checking his fellow officers and running to the rubble. He found four more people exiting a building that the agents could not initially contact, and told them to leave the area.
“I was just trying to make sure all of our people were okay, and then I went from there,” Hosey said. She turned her attention to protecting anyone who had not left the blast area or anyone who returned.
“We just spent time keeping residents who had come out and pedestrians l … keep them away,” Sipos said.
But after their experience, Wells said he feels happy to be alive, but also inseparable from his colleagues.
“The love for them is even greater now,” Wells said of his fellow officers. “Christmas won’t be the same for any of us.”