By Suzie Ziegler
NASHVILLE — Officer Brenna Hosey is one of the “Nashville 6,” a group of police officers who risked their lives to evacuate downtown Nashville last year on Christmas Day. A bomb would go off moments later, leveling the street, killing the suspect and wounding three others.
Hosey went door to door, asking residents to evacuate after a suspicious RV was found parked in the area. The vehicle was emitting an eerie message on a recorded loop seconds before the blast: “If you can hear this message, evacuate now.”
One year later, Hosey looks back on the horror of that night.
“There’s that part of me that didn’t want it to be real. Like we hear this voice saying there is a bomb that’s going to go off, but I’m trying to tell myself someone’s playing a really bad prank,” Hosey told CBS 42.
Hosey doesn’t like to watch the bodycam video. Footage from Officer Michael Sipos showed the moment the blast went off and the chaos that followed.
“I’m the one on the radio screaming for [Officer James Wells] because I didn’t know if he was alive,” Hosey said. “And that 10 second period of not knowing that is still really hard. And that’s the emotional response I’ll probably always have.”
But all six officers survived. In an interview last year, Wells said the explosion had created an unbreakable bond between the officers.
“This is going to tie us together forever, for the rest of my life,” he told the Associated Press. “Christmas will never be the same.”
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On the one-year anniversary, Hosey recalls the relief she felt after learning that her fellow officers were OK.
“Being thankful that we were all safe, and finally hearing from [Officer Amanda Topping] and James and knowing they were safe,” she said. “I think that was probably the biggest gift that we could have been given after that happened.”
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