Nashville Bomber Did Not Die From COVID-19

Drew Fossen

News

1st January 2021

Nashville Bomber Did Not Die From COVID-19

Warner died in the explosion (Getty Images).

The Claim

The Nashville bomber died from COVID-19.

News posted on

Emerging story

Originally posted on Facebook by Chad Prather on December 29, 2020, an image appears to show a screenshot from a CNN broadcast with the headline “Nashville Bomber died from COVID.”

The post was quickly shared over 6K times on Facebook with most people not believing the story. However, some people believed the story to be true in the comments, saying it “clearly shows a screenshot clip from CNN LIVE."

A similar claim received over 12K retweets on Twitter reading “JUST IN: Nashville bomber found inside RV dies from COVID."

Misbar’s Analysis

Misbar’s investigation found that this claim was created as satire.

The headline above the CNN image reads “Bomber died from COVID-19 shortly after blowing himself up.” The creator of this image clearly meant this to be a joke as one cannot survive blowing themselves up. Unfortunately, many people did not get the joke and appeared to take this story seriously because it appeared to originate from CNN LIVE.

This fake story came from Genesius Times, whose headline is “The Most Reliable Source Of Fake News On The Planet.”

According to authorities, the bomber, Anthony Quinn Warner, “was present when the bomb when off and he perished in the bombing.” Through DNA evidence, they confirmed that his remains were found at the scene of the bombing.