Authorities in Tennessee arrested a man Sunday accused of placing an improvised explosive device inside an employee’s car outside a suburban Nashville nursing home.
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesman Josh DeVine said on Twitter that Mitchell Hunter Oakes, 41, was arrested in the alleged bombing attempt. TBI said that Oakes was facing an attempted first-degree murder charge.
According to The Tennessean, state and federal bomb investigators safely detonated the device that was found outside the NHC Cool Springs in Franklin. Authorities described the device as “sophisticated.”
“The device was sophisticated and designed to do maximum harm to the intended victim, and would have hurt several others if it had detonated as intended,” Franklin police Lt. Charles Warner said Friday.
The Tennessean reported that Franklin police responded to a report of a suspicious device inside a vehicle outside the NHC Cool Springs facility at around 7:15 a.m. The building forced about 220 patients out of the building and into different care facilities.
Franklin police said at around 2 p.m. that a small, but safe, explosion occurred to stabilize the device. The Tennessee Highway Patrol said the controlled explosion left behind a “small crater.”
