The shots had come from an apartment building on Second Avenue North in downtown Nashville. She volunteered as backup for another officer. When they got to the scene and exited their cars, they both heard the ominous voice coming from what appeared to be an abandoned RV.

“And that’s when we started hearing this voice saying, ‘There’s a bomb inside this vehicle. Do not approach this vehicle. If you can hear this recording, you need to evacuate the area immediately,’ ” she recalls. “And he and I just gave each other a look like … did we just hear a bomb?”

Officer Hosey and her colleague immediately knew they needed to clear buildings and get residents to safety.

“We were getting ready to start clearing out people when the voice from the RV gave a countdown: 14 minutes until detonation,” she said.

They started knocking on apartment doors—she and three other officers alternating floors.

“I don’t want to call it autopilot … but I definitely reverted back to the training. You do what you have to do to keep everyone else safe. There’s that part of me that I don’t think wanted it to be real but still needed to stress that urgency to everyone I’m clearing out just in case that, ‘We need to get you to safety. I want you to take this seriously like I’m taking it seriously.’ ”

One family, in particular, really sticks out in her mind from that morning. It was a mother with her four young children.

“I scared her. I know I did. I told her there was a threat in the area and that she needed to leave immediately. So, we had gone up to another floor and when we came back down, I knocked on the door to make sure that she had made it out and she was still getting the kids together. She’s got two in a stroller and two walking and she was like, ‘Do I need my car seats? Can you help me get them?’

Officer Hosey went inside the family’s apartment to get the kids to safety.

“I was like, ‘Can you please get your family out of here?’ I think she realized … they are trying to keep me and my family safe. So, they were able to get to the parking garage and leave,” she remembers. “Right after we got all the buildings cleared, we heard ‘three minutes until detonation,’ she said.

They made their way up Second Avenue and all branched off.

“And 10, 15 seconds after I ran the corner, is when the bomb went off.”

Because of Officer Hosey and her colleagues’ work, a few residents only suffered minor injuries.

—

This certainly wasn’t Officer Hosey’s first brush with disaster. During the March 2020 tornado, she was one of the first responders to get citizens to safety.

“Right after the tornado last year, the whole community came together. It didn’t matter what race, religion, background, socioeconomic status you came from. Seeing people coming from sides of the county that thankfully weren’t affected but coming to help those that were … and just seeing fundraisers and donations spots for food and clothes—that’s what strength in community looks like.”