LITTLE ROCK — During a search of Dr. Randeep Mann’s home a month after a grenade-rigged tire exploded in West Memphis, an Arkansas State Police investigator saw a spare tire sitting in a shower stall of the master bedroom, he testified Tuesday.
Investigator Joe Carter said he helped search the Mann home in the Pope Countytown of London a day after city workers stumbled upon a metal ammunition box buried about 300 yards from the home. The box contained 98 live grenades.
The 40mm grenades found in the buried military canister were manufactured solely for military use and were intended to be fired with a grenade launcher, like the ones that officers testified they also found in the Mann home.
But a different type of grenade - a hand-held MK3A2 - was what experts say exploded exactly a month earlier, on Feb. 4, 2009, severely injuring Dr. Trent Pierce, chairman of the board that regulates and licenses physicians practicing in Arkansas.
The experts have said the exploding grenade was surreptitiously duct-taped during the night to a spare Nissan “doughnut” tire that someone had propped up against Pierce’s sport utility vehicle in his driveway. When Pierce attempted to move the tire out of the way the next morning, it exploded, burning flesh off his face, breaking bones in one of his arms, destroying an eye socket and ripping two gold teeth from his mouth.
Pierce, then 54, nearly died, but recuperated and eventually returned to work last August. He was left blind in one eye and still receives treatment for other injuries.
He hasn’t yet testified in Mann’s federal trial, which began July 6 in a Little Rock courtroom. Mann, 52, is accused of plotting the bombing, as well as possessing the illegal cache of live military grenades, possessing two illegal guns and working with his wife to hide documents from investigators.
His wife, Sangeeta “Sue” Mann, 49, is charged in the same trial with obstruction of justice and lying to a grand jury.
Carter testified Tuesday, the sixth day of testimony, that while searching upstairs in the Manns’ master bedroom and bathroom on March 4, 2009, “I opened a shower door and saw a spare tire and a wheel both sitting in the shower.”
He said Sue Mann, who arrived home during the search, told him that her husband had taken the tire inside to clean it because it was too cold outside.
Carter said he didn’t seize the tire because it wasn’t one of the items that the search warrant directed officers to look for and seize. He also noted the presence of several cars - mostly sports cars - in the Manns’ garages.
In testimony last week, a federal agent identified 13vehicles that Mann owned, including a Nissan Maxima.
Mann was initially arrested only for possessing the grenades. He wasn’t charged in the bombing until 11 months later. Court documents filed about three weeks later revealed that the homemade bomb was created with a grenade and a spare tire and rim.
On cross-examination Tuesday by defense attorney Blake Hendrix, Carter acknowledged that Mann was hospitable when state and federal agents showed up to search his house, saying he had “expected it.” Carter also agreed that all the vehicles in Mann’s garage appeared to be clean and well-maintained.
Jurors also heard Tuesday from Bill Buford, a former veteran Arkansas agent-in charge for the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who is now the state bomb-squad coordinator. He described the unearthed grenades as being in a “high-explosive” category, saying they detonate at a speed of about 23,000 to 24,000 feet per second.
Buford estimated that the hole where they were hidden in the ground had been dug probably “no more than a day or two” before being found on March 3, 2009.
The grenades were analyzed for fingerprints and DNA, with neither test linking them to Mann, according to other testimony and a stipulation read into the court record.
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Meanwhile, a federal prisoner told jurors that Mann confided to him shortly after meeting him in a courthouse holding cell in April 2009 that he had buried the grenades because he knew he would be a suspect in the bombing.
The inmate acknowledged under cross-examination that he had offered to testify against several defendants facing a variety of charges in exchange for leniency in several cases - state and federal - that were pending against him. He also acknowledged that he designed jewelry for white supremacists, but said he wasn’t one of them, and denied that the fact that Mann is a native of India had anything to do with his request to testify.
Another man who said he shared cell space with Mann in the Pulaski County jail testified a day earlier that Mann had confided his hatred of Pierce and said he wished Pierce was dead.
On cross-examination, defense attorneys showed that the inmate, who was seeking relief from a 10-year mandatory sentence in exchange for his testimony, had several run-ins with Mann in the jail. One time, he acknowledged, Mann became angry about the inmate playing dominoes late at night, and took some of the dominoes and flushed them down a toilet.
The trial is to resume at 9 a.m. today before U.S. District Judge Brian S. Miller.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/21/2010