A 38-year-old man who spent much of his life in prison has been charged with kidnapping teacher Eliza Fletcher, who has still not been found, Memphis Police announced Sunday morning.
The news of Cleotha “Pookie” Abston’s arrest comes a day after investigators revealed they had located a “vehicle of interest” in the abduction of Fletcher, 34, a married mom of two boys whose grandfather was a wealthy philanthropist. Fletcher was out jogging near the University of Memphis on Friday morning when assailants in an SUV bundled her into the vehicle and drove off.
Abston, 38, was charged with especially aggravated kidnapping and tampering with evidence. He is being held at the Shelby County Jail. . . .
Police said they arrested a second person, apparently a relative of Abston, but do not believe he is connected to Fletcher’s abduction. Instead, Mario Abston, 36, was hit with gun and drug charges.
“Eliza Fletcher has not been located at this time. MPD Investigators and officers, along with our local and federal partners, continue searching for Mrs. Fletcher,” Memphis cops said.
Fletcher graduated from the Hutchinson School in Memphis in 2006 and got a teaching degree from Belmont University. She has been married for eight years.
Her family has offered a $50,000 reward for her safe return. Fletcher’s grandfather ran Orgill, the hardware supply giant started by his family that is now worth over $3.2 billion.
When officers stopped Cleotha Abston, he attempted to flee but was taken into custody.
Investigators then interviewed a person who stated that after the abduction at approximately 7:50 a.m., they saw Cleotha Abston at the home of Mario Abston, in the 1700 block of S. Orleans Street, a report said. . . .
The person stated they saw the suspect cleaning the interior of the GMC Terrain with floor cleaner and stated that he was behaving oddly, an affidavit stated.
The same information was later given by Mario Abston, the suspects brother, who stated that he too saw the suspect cleaning the interior of the car with floor cleaner, records show.
Both the witness and the brother saw the suspect washing his clothes in the sink of the house.
Mario Abston said that it appeared that the suspect was acting very strange. Cleotha Abston declined to provide investigators with the location of the victim, police said.
The other man who was arrested, Mario Abston, 36, was charged with Possession of a Controlled Substance with Intent to Manufacture and Sell Fentanyl, Possession of a Controlled Substance with Intent to Manufacture and Sell Heroin, and Convicted Felon in Possession of a Firearm During the Commission of a Dangerous Felony, police said.
Police said he is currently not believed to be connected to Fletcher’s abduction.
So it appears that the suspect’s brother Mario is also a convicted felon, but the really scary thing is the report that “Pookie” was apparently trying to conceal evidence related to the crime — blood?
Obviously, the police believe they have enough evidence to convict Cleotha Abston of kidnapping Fletcher, and if she turns up dead — which now seems the likely outcome — there is little doubt they’ll be able to convict Abston of her murder. It will be a death penalty case.
Surely our readers have not forgotten Desmond Hatchett, In 2012, the prolific Knoxville baby-daddy achieved national notoriety:
Desmond Hatchett is pleading with the state of Tennessee to help him pay for child support.
With 30 kids, who could afford to pay child support?
Yes, 30 children by 11 different “baby mamas.”
Desmond explained how it all happened, well you know what we mean, “I had four kids in the same year. Twice.”
The children range in age from toddlers to 14 years old.
He was last in court in 2009, at which time he had 21 children.
That means he’s had at least 9 more children in the last 3 years.
Hatchett only has a minimum wage job, which means some of the moms receive as little as… $1.49 a month.
When last we checked in on him in September 2021, the East Tennessee Sperm King was behind bars:
The Knoxville Police Departments Community Engagement Response Team captured wanted felon Desmond Hatchett, 42, of Knoxville on Sunday around 6:15 p.m., KPD said.
Hatchett was wanted for seven outstanding warrants out of Knox County. These warrants include aggravated burglary, aggravated domestic assault, violation of an order of protection and failure to appear on charges of: rape, robbery, aggravated burglary, KPD said.
Officers spotted a red Ford Taurus known to be occupied by Hatchett and attempted to initiate a traffic stop with him. Hatchett fled from officers at a high rate of speed, according to KPD.
Officers initiated their emergency equipment while on N. Mary Street near Magnolia Avenue, but Hatchett continued to flee from officers for several minutes until he came to a stop in a driveway in the 4100 block of Skyline Drive and fled on foot, KPD said.
After a brief foot pursuit, officers took Hatchett into custody without further incident, according to KPD.
Along with the outstanding warrants previously listed, Hatchett was also charged with evading arrest among several additional minor charges, KPD said.
A man with over 100 previous charges has been indicted on five more, according to court documents obtained by WVLT News.
This time, Desmond Hatchett, 42, has been indicted on charges of evading arrest, violation of driver’s license law, reckless driving, failure to provide evidence of financial responsibility and violation of window tint law.
Hatchett has previously faced over 100 charges. He has also previously been unable to pay child support for his children, of which he has 21.
Well, that’s 21 that we know of. There’s no telling how many other offspring Hatchett may have sired more recently. Every would-be baby-mama in East Tennessee awaits his release from custody.
Perhaps you have forgotten the name Desmond Hatchett, who was the subject of a manhunt in Tennessee. Let me refresh your memory:
Tennessee made headlines as the Deadbeat Dad Capital of the World a few years ago. The story started in May 2012 with Desmond Hatchett, 33, of Knoxville, who had reportedly sired 30 offspring by 11 different women. WREG-TV quoted Hatchett: “I had four kids in the same year. Twice.” When that story drew nationwide attention — “Tennessee Baby Machine Is A State Inmate” was the Smoking Gun headline — a Memphis TV station did some checking with local court records and discovered that Terry Tyrone Turnage had spawned 23 children with 17 different women, while Richard M. Colbert was the father of 25 children by 18 different women. Then in 2013, a Nashville TV station reported that Orlando Shaw, 33, was the father of 22 children by 14 different women. “I was young and ambitious, and I love women,” Shaw told WTVF. “You can’t knock no man for loving women.”
In case you lost count: 4 men, 60 women, 100 children.
None of these serial inseminators was a “father” beyond the mere facts of biology. They were not capable of paying child-support adequate to the needs of their offspring, nor did they support the “baby mamas” who incubated their seed. Various taxpayer-funded government programs — Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, public housing, AFDC, etc. — make possible such reckless sprees of irresponsible procreation. Any student of sociology would expect that when these children are old enough to reproduce, they will do so in similarly disordered ways. And this is what feminists call success.
There are varying estimates of the number of children sired by Desmond Hatchett, and when police issued warrants for his arrest in March, WVLT-TV reported that the serial inseminator only had 21 offspring:
Police said Desmond Lanier Hatchett, 41, of Knoxville, Tennessee is wanted on charges related to rape, aggravated burglary, aggravated assault, and aggravated robbery stemming from a domestic incident that happened in the 100 block of Dew Drop Lane on February 11, 2021.
WVLT discovered Hatchett has over 100 previous known charges. He is also the man who fathered 21 kids and couldn’t afford to pay child support in 2009.
Hatchett is described as standing 6’0″ and weighing 220 pounds. Anyone who sees him or knows where he may be is urged to call 911.
Officers spotted a red Ford Taurus known to be occupied by Hatchett and attempted to initiate a traffic stop with him. Hatchett fled from officers at a high rate of speed, according to KPD.
Officers initiated their emergency equipment while on N. Mary Street near Magnolia Avenue, but Hatchett continued to flee from officers for several minutes until he came to a stop in a driveway in the 4100 block of Skyline Drive and fled on foot, KPD said.
After a brief foot pursuit, officers took Hatchett into custody without further incident, according to KPD.
This menace to society is now behind bars where he belongs. No word yet on whether he impregnated any more women while he was at large.
We have talked before about this case (“Nika Holbert and the BLM Myth”), but I must again address the death of Nika Holbert because one of the YouTube channels I watch regularly has featured it.
John Correia’s Active Self Protection channel is both entertaining and educational. If you want to see real-life violent confrontations analyzed by a specialist in self-defense, this is the channel for you. Seldom do I ever disagree with John Correia, but in analyzing the shootout between Holbert and Officer Josh Baker, Correia suggest that the way to prevent such incidents is to end “the drug war.” Watch the video:
John is just wrong on this issue of “the drug war,” and I’ll explain why.
Narcotic use is a proxy for stupidity. Yes, there are people at Harvard with drug habits, and plenty of folks with high SAT scores might enjoy the occasional tab of ecstasy or toot of coke, but in general — as a sociological statistic — dopeheads are not valedictorians. Beyond that simple fact of life, an important but less-appreciated aspect of the “drug war” is that the way you get busted for dope is by being stupid.
When I was a teenage dopehead, the importance of avoiding interactions with the law-enforcement community was obvious enough. You didn’t want to be caught “holding,” as we said, especially when you were involved in the, uh, commercial distribution of illegal substances.
A smart dopehead would not be driving around with dope in the car. Leave your stash at home, dude. But if you are going to carry dope with you, maybe you shouldn’t be driving a car owned by a drug dealer with six felony warrants. That was Nika Holbert’s stupid mistake, followed by the even more stupid mistake of pulling a gun on a cop.
Think of this in terms of incentives. As a society, it behooves us to reward intelligence, to make sure that the smartest people get into positions where their intelligence can be most usefully employed. Without clever people to design computers and so forth, our civilization’s technological advancement would be impaired. But the obverse this principle is also true — stupidity must be penalized. Why? Because stupid people, if left to do as they please, will screw things up for everybody.
Who Broke the Milkshake Machine?
Everything wrong in our country — from traffic jams to lousy restaurant service to the presidency of Joe Biden — is the fault of stupid people.
Think about all the ways stupid people make your life worse. Say you pull into the drive-thru line at McDonald’s. You’re going to wait longer than necessary because, somewhere up ahead of you in the line, there is a stupid person who can’t get their order right. Instead of ordering something simple — “Give me a Number Three meal” — they have to do it all complicated, and not communicating very clearly. Because they’re stupid. When you finally get to order your large chocolate milkshake, they tell you, “Sorry, the milkshake machine’s broken.” Why? Who broke the milkshake machine? A stupid person, that’s who.
Excuse me for digressing into a gripe about my pet peeves, but my point is, there is a shortage of intelligent people in America, whereas we have a vast surplus of stupidity. Why? Incentives.
As a society, we are no longer sufficiently penalizing stupidity. Among the potential penalties for being stupid is a loss of income, but apparently you can’t fire people for being stupid nowadays, because they’ll sue for “worker’s rights” or whatever, which is why McDonald’s keeps hiring idiots who don’t know how a milkshake machine works.
This same basic problem is why a fat idiot thinks she can drive around with dope in her purse and a pistol in a car owned by a drug dealer, but starts shrieking like an innocent victim when a cop tries to put the handcuffs on her. And then gets killed because she is apparently too stupid to know what happens when you point a pistol at a cop.
According to online records from both Metro and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Nika Holbert’s criminal background includes several repeat misdemeanors, including driving with a revoked license and theft under $500. Holbert also had a felony drug charge from 2010.
Her last listed interaction with law enforcement was a public indecency charge in 2017.
“Live and learn” as the old adage says, but stupidity is incurable. The only way to protect society against the harm caused by stupid people is by quarantine — put them behind bars so that they can’t make life miserable for the rest of us. Alas, however, stupid people are voters, and they tend to vote for the kind of politicians who think the answer to every problem is to make life easier for the stupid people who elect them.
“Let’s decriminalize drugs,” say the stupid people, who are statistically more likely to be dopeheads, and also more likely to get caught. Then the politicians who pander to such people get elected, and when their stupid policies turn communities into nightmare wastelands, everyone pretends to be surprised by this predictable outcome. Oregon legalized dope, and Portland is a lunatic hellscape. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
While we’re at it, let’s discuss the role of technology in what happened to Nika Holbert. You see, the reason she got pulled over was because he ran the license plate number on the Camaro she was driving and learned it was owned by a drug dealer with six outstanding warrants. Cops now have computers in their patrol cars that make it much easier to do this and, in many jurisdictions, police cars are equipped with automatic scanning devices that alert cops to vehicles that are stolen, or with other issues including outstanding warrants. You will perhaps not be surprised to learn that the Democrat-controlled city council in Nashville considered tag-scanning technology to be “controversial”:
License plate reader technology was previously banned in Metro Nashville back in 2017.
After street racing problems caused public safety concerns, the conversation has been brought back into focus for the Metro Council. At the start of 2020 three different bills looked to address how LPRs could be utilized properly in Nashville.
“We need some more tools in our toolbox in order to help completely eradicate this dangerous activity,” District 26 Councilmember Courtney Johnston said.
Johnston, whose legislation was deferred until February 2, said she listened to people’s concerns on how the technology would affect policing and privacy.
Who are the “people” who have these “concerns”? The same people, I suspect, who got tag-scanners banned in Nashville in 2017.
Stupid people, that’s who. You see, stupidity is a hereditary trait, and so there are a lot of people out walking around on our nation’s streets — voting for Democrats, and attending city council meetings — who have stupid relatives in prison. When you see a story in the media talking about how the “community” is concerned that police are being too successful at putting criminals behind bars, this “community” sentiment comes from the stupid relatives of stupid criminals.
Man, if I’d been stupid enough to get myself shot by cops back when I was a teenage dopehead, my family wouldn’t have been “demanding answers.” My kinfolk are smart enough it would have been obvious to them that I’d simply suffered the predictable consequences of stupidity.
“No, sir. I have nothing to say. I understand that I have the right to have my attorney present during questioning.”
Never went to prison, because I’m not stupid.
Also, eventually, I realized the error of my ways, and one of my youthful errors was hanging around with losers and troublemakers.
This is another reason why I’m against John Correia’s idea of surrendering to stupid people in what he calls “the drug war.”
Some People Should Ride the Bus
Stupid behavior leads to bad consequences, and smart people eventually notice this pattern, either in their own lives or by observing the lives of others. It is only the truly stupid among us — the hopeless dimwits — who are repeatedly in trouble with the law.
Did I mention that Nika Holbert’s criminal record was released by officials? As evidence of incorrigible stupidity, it’s quite conclusive. She kept getting caught for driving without a license, or driving with fake tags on the car, or possessing small quantities of marijuana, which are exactly the kind of things that stupid people get caught doing.
Stupid people should not be allowed to drive. That’s why we have public transportation, for people who are too stupid to drive. What part of “Nika should have been riding the bus” do I need to explain here?
America’s problem is not merely our failure to penalize stupidity, but also that intelligent people are far too polite for their own good. We have been taught that it’s wrong — “insensitive” or too “judgmental” — to make stupid people feel ashamed of their stupidity. This is an unfortunate consequence of the “self-esteem” cult that took root in our education system decades ago. The emergence of this cult was a typical example of what happens when mediocre minds (think, education majors) are exposed to sociology statistics without proper adult supervision.
Some education professional noticed that (a) successful people tend to have (b) high self-esteem, and concluded that (b) was the cause of (a).
Notice how I just assumed that the reader is (a) capable of understanding analogies and (b) familiar with Broadway musicals. This is because I understand that 1,500 words into a blog post is not where you find people who should be riding the bus, IYKWIMAITYD.
No, the kind of people who are still reading after 1,500 words are extraordinarily intelligent. So smart are my blog readers, in fact, that some of them are designing space robots for NASA.
And driving German cars. I don’t know if there are any sociological studies on this, but based on a small sample of space-robot engineers, I have observed a distinct preference for German automobiles. However, correlation is not causation, and simply buying a Volkswagen won’t turn you into a NASA engineer, the same way that high self-esteem won’t make you successful. This is the error of the Cult of Self-Esteem, which has ruined our school system because teachers think they can make kids succeed simply by telling them how wonderful they are.
That’s why no one ever told Nika Holbert she was too stupid to be allowed to drive a car. And she ended up getting shot for it.
Nika Holbert shot a Nashville police officer last week and was shot to death when the officer returned fire. Ordinarily, this would not be a very newsworthy incident — “Criminal Dies in Shootout” — but we are not living in ordinary times. The Black Lives Matter movement has created what can only be described as a myth of racial innocence. At the core of this myth is the belief that every problem experienced by any black person in American can be explained as a result of racism; therefore, when a black person engages in wrongdoing, they are never really guilty — it’s all whitey’s fault — and should never suffer consequences.
The BLM Myth of Racial Innocence is now embedded in nearly all media coverage of crime involving the black community. No matter what the circumstances may be, the black person who commits a crime is never really guilty of anything, it is implied, and we are expected to believe that every black inmate serving time is a political prisoner, a victim of “systemic racism.” So when a police officer goes to arrest a black suspect who resists arrest, we are expected to sympathize with the criminal, rather than sympathizing with the officer who is, after all, putting his own life at risk to enforce the law and maintain public safety.
“She made some very, very bad decisions, prior to shooting at the officer. But unfortunately, you just don’t understand her state of mind,” said Ashley Upkins, managing partner at The Cochran Firm.
Upkins has worked on several civil rights cases, including police conduct. She said despite the fact that this was a case of a white police officer pulling over a black driver, she does not believe the shootout was racially motivated. Instead, Upkins suggests the situation escalated due to systemic racial fears.
“I don’t think anyone can watch that video and not believe that she looked terrified and petrified,” Upkins explained.
Hold that thought for a minute while I explain a little about the background of this case, because contrary to what the lawyer says, I think I do understand Nika Holbert’s “state of mind,” and the reason she “looked terrified and petrified” had nothing to do with “systemic racism.”
Go back up to the top of this post and look at that picture of Nika Holbert, taken from the police officer’s bodycam. Notice anything?
Yeah — the car. That’s a 2015 Camaro.
You can buy one used for $15,000-$20,000.
Have you got $20,000 to spare? Because I’d really like to drive around in a late-model Camaro, instead of an old Nissan. So, let us ask, how was it that Nika Holbert was driving around in this fine vehicle?
Say hello to Demond Maurice Buchanan, who is well-known to law enforcement in Nashville, his lengthy criminal record dating back to 1996 — not coincidentally, the year he turned 18 — and including numerous drug offenses, weapons offenses, attempted murder and, less than five years ago, vehicular homicide:
A convicted felon has been arrested for vehicular homicide, aggravated assault, gun and marijuana charges.
SWAT officers arrested 37-year-old Demond M. Buchanan following an indictment on the charges filed after a crash last May that killed a passenger in his car.
On May 2nd, Buchanan was driving a Camaro possibly in excess of 100 mph when he struck an SUV. His passenger -Marlon Burnett died at the scene and Buchanan was hospitalized. A weapon, cash and marijuana were found inside the car.
Buchanan was found at a motel on Atrium Way. Inside, police found baggies of crack cocaine, heroin, marijuana and a loaded pistol.
That was in 2016. You might think that a criminal with such a lengthy rap sheet, charged with such serious crimes, would go to prison for a long time. But for some reason, the state of Tennessee can’t keep Demond Buchanan behind bars, so he was out on the streets, committing further felonies. Buchanan was wanted on six felony warrants when Officer Josh Baker spotted his 2015 Camaro. Baker called for backup when he pulled over the Camaro and began questioning the driver, Nika Holbert, who said she was “really confused” about why she was being stopped:
Was it “systemic racial fears” that led this traffic stop to escalate into a shootout? Or was it the fact that (a) Nika Holbert knew she had drugs in her purse, and also (b) was in possession of a firearm, so that (c) a search of the car would result in her going back to jail?
According to online records from both Metro and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Nika Holbert’s criminal background includes several repeat misdemeanors, including driving with a revoked license and theft under $500.
Holbert also had a felony drug charge from 2010.
Her last listed interaction with law enforcement was a public indecency charge in 2017.
So she was a habitual violator driving around in a car belonging to a locally notorious criminal. That is why the situation “escalated.”
One reason you’re seeing more situations “escalate” in this manner is simply that technology has shifted the balance toward law enforcement. More and more police vehicles are equipped with scanners that automatically read tags of passing cars, so that if you’re driving a stolen vehicle or, as in Nika Holbert’s case, driving a car whose owner is wanted on arrest warrants, the cops are gonna get you. Five or 10 years ago, you could be driving around with a car full of felonies and cops wouldn’t know it, unless you did something to attract their attention. Nowadays, it’s a lot harder for criminals to get away with crimes, which is why we keep seeing videos like this. Race has nothing to do with it.
A Nashville-based organization is calling for change nearly a week after two separate shootings — one of them deadly — involved Metro Police officers.
Nashville Organized for Action and Hope (NOAH) held a press conference on Thursday.
“Talk, talk, talk, we’re tired of talking, we’re tired of waiting,” said NOAH task force member Jane Boram. “Nashville cannot continue to kill innocent women. This has got to stop.”
Ma’am, Nika Holbert was not an innocent woman. She shot first.
You pull a gun on a cop, expect to die. I don’t know how to explain that more clearly. Cops aren’t trained to lose gunfights.
“De-escalation” is the buzzword in law enforcement these days. Police are trained to reduce the risk of violence in confrontations by talking in a reassuring manner to the subjects of their investigations. There is also a lot of emphasis on “less lethal” weapons like tasers and beanbag guns as ways to avoid shooting suspects. In all of this, Nashville Officer Ben Williams was doing a great job with Melissa Wooden.
It was all fine, up until she got shot. Here, watch the bodycam video and see for yourself what went wrong with this situation:
When Officer Williams arrives on the scene, his first challenge is to get Wooden — who is mentally ill and suicidal — to move away from the other officer’s vehicle. He succeeds in this task, advancing step by step in such a way that she retreats from the road. Everything is going splendidly up until about the 3:50 mark on the video, when Wooden’s grandmother comes rolling down the driveway on her electric scooter.
“I ain’t scared of her,” says grandma. “Melissa, put that stuff down!”
Everything begins going downhill from there. Officer Williams now has to worry about protecting grandma from this lunatic who has armed herself with a baseball bat and a pickaxe and is obviously ready to die.
Well, “less lethal,” right? So he tries the taser, which doesn’t work.
If you’ve watched as many of these police videos as I have, this is predictable. Tasers are not a reliable weapon. The cop would have done better to charge her with a nightstick — c’mon, a woman versus a muscular cop? No doubt who would win that confrontation, but video of a cop whacking a crazy woman with a nightstick wouldn’t do much for “community relations,” see? So he used the taser, which only enraged the crazy woman. She then charged at Officer Williams, which prompted Officer Brandon Lopez to shoot her. Totally justified, I might add.
Nobody rioted in Nashville. CNN didn’t go 24/7 on the story. There were no #Justice4Melissa hashtags or “Crazy Lives Matter” marches.
Cops can shoot white people every day and nobody cares.
Melissa Wooden was in critical but stable condition as of Saturday, so she failed at her suicide-by-cop gambit — just barely — and I will leave it to readers to decide for themselves the lessons of this encounter, beyond the most obvious lesson: Crazy People Are Dangerous.
Timothy Wilks had a great idea for a YouTube prank — fake a robbery by charging at people with a giant knife. The result wasn’t funny:
A man was shot and killed Friday night in Nashville, Tenn., after wielding a butcher knife for a robbery “prank” intended for YouTube, police said, according to reports.
Officers were called to the car park of Urban Air Trampoline and Adventure Park around 9:20 p.m., according to a news release from Nashville police.
Police said Timothy Wilks, 20, and his friend brandished knives and approached a group that included David Starnes Jr, 23.
Police said Starnes shot Wilks in what he thought was self-defense, Nashville’s WSMV-TV reported.
Authorities are investigating the case and no charges have been filed against Starnes.
OK, maybe it was funny, if you have a sick, dark sense of humor. Me? I’m just reporting the news that there is one less idiot in the world.
More than a year before Anthony Warner detonated a Christmas Day bomb in downtown Nashville, officers visited his home after his girlfriend told police he was building bombs in a recreational vehicle at his residence, according to documents. But they did not make contact with him, or see inside his RV.
Those revelations, contained in a newly disclosed 2019 incident report, put Nashville’s police chief on the defensive Wednesday as he said his officers did nothing wrong and that they had handled the situation properly. He added that other than a 1970s marijuana-related arrest, Warner was “squeaky clean.”
“I believe the officers did everything they could legally. Maybe they could have followed up more, hindsight is 20/20,” Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said at a news conference.
Officers were called to Pamela Perry’s Nashville home on Aug. 21, 2019, following a report from her attorney that she was making suicidal threats while sitting on her front porch with firearms, the police department said in a statement.
According to the incident report, when officers arrived, police said she had two unloaded pistols beside her on the porch. She told them the guns belonged to “Tony Warner” and she did not want them in the house any longer. Perry, then 62, was taken for a psychological evaluation after speaking to mental health professionals.
“During that visit, before leaving for the evaluation, Perry told police that her boyfriend was making bombs in an RV,” the report stated.
The report says police went to Warner’s home, about 1 and 1/2 miles (2.4 kilometers) away, but he didn’t answer the door when they knocked repeatedly. They saw the RV but it was in a fenced-off backyard and officers couldn’t see inside the vehicle. They also spotted several security cameras and wires attached to an alarm sign on a front door. “They saw no evidence of a crime and had no authority to enter his home or fenced property,” the police statement said, adding supervisors and detectives were then notified.
“If we could have had more to go off of, it would have been good,” Drake said.
Law enforcement officials did not publicly release the report, which was obtained only after news outlets submitted public records requests. Later, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced that Warner’s only arrest was for a 1978 marijuana-related charge.
David Rausch, the TBI’s director, had told reporters earlier this week that Warner was not on their radar. Rausch was flanked by federal and state officials — including Drake — who did not object or amend the statement.
Drake later told reporters Wednesday he didn’t learn of the report until late Sunday evening, but said he believed his officers that they could not smell any explosives and that there was no probable cause for a search warrant.
You can almost — almost — see how this happened. Officers were called to a report that a woman was threatening suicide; she was taken for psychiatric evaluation. So all the police had to go on, in terms of suspicions about a bomb, was what a crazy woman told them. Imagine going to a judge to get a search warrant based on that.
Investigators are exploring several conspiracy theories as potential motives behind the Christmas Day bombing outside an AT&T building in Nashville, Tennessee, including evidence that the bomber believed in lizard people and a so-called reptilian conspiracy, two senior law enforcement officials said Wednesday.
Investigators are expected to conclude their crime scene work this week, but it could take several more weeks until they determine the motive of the bomber, Anthony Quinn Warner, who died in the blast.
Since Saturday, authorities have been examining Warner’s digital devices — which an official said includes a significant trove of pictures, videos and writings — looking for any clues to what drove the man to set off a powerful bomb inside his recreational vehicle, which took down communications networks and injured several people in downtown Nashville.
Specifically, investigators are looking into the suspect’s previous trips to an undisclosed location in Tennessee where he would camp out in his recreational vehicle and, according to the suspect’s statements to others, hunt possible aliens, the officials said.
In addition, investigators are aware of statements the suspect made about an internet conspiracy that powerful politicians and Hollywood figures are actually lizards or other reptiles who have extraterrestrial origins and are taking over society, the officials said.
In terms of protecting Americans from terrorist threats, how do you deal with kooks who believe we’re being invaded by “lizard people”? Like, dealing with al-Qaeda or ISIS is certainly a national security challenge, but what are officials supposed to do when every random kook might go off on a deadly rampage? We are at the mercy of deranged nutjobs:
In the wake of an explosion that rocked Nashville last week, Americans are more concerned about domestic terrorism than foreign threats, and many believe the danger has increased during President Trump’s term in office.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 63% of Likely U.S. Voters say domestic terrorism is the greater threat to the United States, compared to 24% who say foreign terrorism is the greater threat.
