The intended victim in the NHC Place attempted bombing in Cool Springs was identified as the suspect's estranged wife.
U.S. Attorney David Rivera said the woman, said the victim is a nurse at the Franklin assisted living facility.
The victim's shift ended at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday. When she opened the car door, she saw the device attached to the inside of the driver’s door. She noticed the device had wires attached to it and said she immediately knew it was an explosive device.
Lt. Aussie Thaxter is a bomb technician with Tennessee Highway Patrol. He responded to the scene.
Thaxter said, "From what we saw with the robot the device looked pretty stable so we wanted to make sure there was nothing else inside the vehicle that could have been harmful while we attempted to get this device out of the vehicle.”
The vehicle only had one device inside it.
Thaxter said, “It had the potential to hurt anybody that may have walked up on the device unexpectedly.”
The employees of the care facility were moved to safe portions of the building while law enforcement explosive specialists moved the device to a safe area, where it exploded during an attempt to render the device safe.
The nurse had filed an Order of Protection against the suspect, Mitchell Oakes, on June 10, in Chesapeake City, Virginia.
She also told law enforcement that Oakes had extensive knowledge and experience in manufacturing and using explosive materials and that she had received a threatening phone call from him earlier in the week.
Michael Knight, a public information officer for the ATF said they are tracing where the materials were purchased.
Knight said, "We use the bomb arson tracking system 'BATTS.' This is through the U.S. bomb data center that’s located in Huntsville, Alabama. This is really crucial because in any explosive investigation, the parts the pieces, the intelligence that comes is all put into the database.”
According to Oakes' cell phone GPS data, police learned that the phone traveled from the Pikeville area to the immediate area of the NHC facility in Franklin and returned to the Pikeville area during the time period surrounding the incident.
According to the complaint, in January 2007, Mitchell Oakes was previously convicted of solicitation to commit second degree murder in Cumberland County and had been sentenced to four years in prison.
Oakes was also convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm in Bledsoe County in 2014.
On Saturday, he was charged with possessing an explosive device and being a convicted felon in possession of an explosive device. If convicted of these offenses, Oakes faces up to 10 years in prison on each charge.
