Friday night explosion came from car in motel parking lot UPDATED MONDAY

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UPDATE MONDAY MORNING: Sheriff’s department Public Information Officer Josh Stargell said in a press release that “the explosion does not appear to be accidental and is not drug related.”

The man was later transported to the Columbus Regional Health Stress Center. His name will not be released due to an ongoing criminal investigation, Stargell said.

This is the car that exploded in the Green Valley Motor Lodge parking lot, after it was towed to the sheriff's department. | Josh Stargell
This is the car that exploded in the Green Valley Motor Lodge parking lot, after it was towed to the sheriff’s department. | Josh Stargell

ORIGINAL POST:

A PT Cruiser belonging to a guest at the Green Valley Motor Lodge caused the explosion that rocked the west side of Nashville late Friday night.

After the explosion blew the windshield and windows out of his car, the driver left the lodge and drove west on State Road 46. Police stopped him at the west gate of Brown County State Park shortly after the 911 calls came in about the explosion.

It’s not clear what happened yet. The driver told police that he was sitting in the PT Cruiser and was lighting a cigarette when a propane tank exploded in the car, said Sheriff Scott Southerland.

 

The man’s hat was burned to the ceiling, but he told police he could hear OK, and he didn’t have any serious injuries.

No one at the inn was injured either, but an extended cab pickup truck that had been parked next to the PT Cruiser had its windshield and driver’s side windows destroyed, and the top console in the truck had popped loose from the ceiling. Gas tanks in the back of that truck were intact.

Police at the lodge found the PT Cruiser’s windshield and at least two windows in the parking lots of the lodge and the former Little Nashville Opry next door.

The windows of two rooms in the lodge, in the top and bottom floors, were broken near where the PT Cruiser was parked, and a security camera on the outside of the office appeared to have been knocked loose by a piece of flying car window.

A woman at the scene, who did not wish to be identified in print, told the sheriff that she saw the driver go back into his room after the explosion and get something to put in the car before driving off.

Police searched the driver’s room. No one else was inside it.

Southerland said the PT Cruiser will be towed back to the sheriff’s department and officers will get a search warrant for it.

“It’s different,” the sheriff said. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

Southerland, who lives about five miles away, said he heard the explosion at home. Reports of people hearing it came from as far away as the Brown-Bartholomew county line.

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