In Other News: Nashville bomber left hints of trouble, but motive elusive; His wife died while both were in a care facility. Lonely, he dreams of post-pandemic love

Published 12:33 pm Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Editor’s note: “In Other News” is a list of state, national and global headlines compiled by Daily Citizen-News staff from Associated Press-provided stories. Click on the headlines below to read the full stories.

Nashville bomber left hints of trouble, but motive elusive

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — In the days before he detonated a bomb in downtown Nashville on Christmas, Anthony Quinn Warner changed his life in ways that suggest he never intended to survive the blast that killed him and wounded three other people. Warner, 63, gave away his car, telling the recipient that he had cancer. A month before the bombing, he signed a document that transferred his longtime home in a Nashville suburb to a California woman for nothing in return. The computer consultant told an employer that he was retiring. But he didn’t leave behind a clear digital footprint or any other obvious clues to explain why he set off the explosion in his parked recreational vehicle or played a message warning people to flee before it damaged dozens of buildings and knocked out cellphone service in the area.

His wife died while both were in a care facility. Lonely, he dreams of post-pandemic love

LOS ANGELES — At 85 and in an assisted living facility, Len Maisch has been thinking about his childhood holidays, when his alcoholic mom went drinking, leaving him and his brother alone at Christmas. After 10 months in coronavirus lockdown at his Redondo Beach complex, he’s feeling the same sense of isolation and irrelevance that overwhelmed him as a kid. “I feel abandoned. I am feeling desperately sorry for myself,” he said recently. “Doesn’t anyone have any empathy for us?” Like thousands of people weathering strict rules inside nursing homes and assisted living facilities, Maisch is grappling with the social costs of his safety as the pandemic continues to decimate congregate care settings, killing older people at alarming rates. A recent survey unsurprisingly found that 3 out of 4 nursing home residents felt lonely under the restrictions.

Wiser resolutions? Lessons from COVID’s unfulfilled ones

She’d wanted to frame and hang them — just three printed pictures that had been sitting in Lucy O’Donoghue’s suburban Atlanta house since the year began. That’s all. Yet with a full-time job and two small kids, she hadn’t found the time. But when COVID-19 slowed life to a quarantine-induced crawl, she began working remotely. It seemed like the perfect time to get this — and a slew of other small projects — done. Eight months later, O’Donoghue finally walked the two short blocks to a store near her house and bought a trio of ready-made frames. “I put the pieces of art up in my house, and that made me so happy,” she said. “How is it that something that only took me 45 minutes has taken me over a year to get around to doing?” The answer, as it has been with so much, is this: Because 2020.

Judge blocks residency challenges to 4,000 Georgia voters

COLUMBUS — A federal judge ordered local election officials in Georgia to allow voting by more than 4,000 people whose eligibility was being challenged ahead of next week’s runoff elections for the U.S. Senate. U.S. District Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner blocked election boards in Ben Hill County and Muscogee County, which includes Columbus, from forcing large numbers of voters to prove their residency before casting ballots in the runoffs. The judge ruled that denying so many voters access to the ballot so close to an election would likely violate the National Voter Registration Act.