Friend of Mann’s tells of hot words

He doubted wish to kill genuine

— On several occasions before a homemade bomb severely injured the chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board, Dr. Randeep Mann confided to a friend that “he wished he could kill all those motherf*****s,” the man testified Wednesday.

“I also have said something like that at the heat of the moment, and that’s how I took it,” the friend, Gerald Riley of Russellville, hastily added during testimony at Mann’s trial in federal court in Little Rock.

At times so reluctant to testify that he choked up and wiped tears from hiseyes, Riley, who said he considered Mann one of his best friends, also revealed that he was with Mann at a gun show in 2008 when the doctor purchased several empty military ammunition tins.

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Doctor bombing

Riley confirmed that the green tins that Mann took home looked just like the one that police found a month after the bombing, buried in a field near Mann’s home and filled with 98 live 40mm grenades, which are illegal for anyone except the military to possess.

Dr. Trent Pierce, the board chairman, was severely injured on the morning of Feb. 4, 2009, when he walked outto his car parked on his West Memphis driveway and apparently moved a spare tire that someone had propped against the front bumper. The tire had been rigged with a hidden military-style hand grenade designed to detonate when it was moved.

Mann is on trial on charges of orchestrating the bombing and possessing the illegal grenades and two improperly registered guns. His wife, Sangeeta “Sue” Mann, is on trial on charges of trying to obstruct the investigation.

Riley said that Mann, afriend of his and his family’s for 15 years, was also his physician. On the day of the bombing, he said, he had an appointment at Mann’s Russellville clinic, and while driving there, he received a phone call from his wife telling him about reports of the bombing.

He said that when he saw Mann at the clinic, he asked the doctor, “Did you hear what happened? The head of the medical board got bombed.”

Riley said Mann “acted surprised” and immediately summoned his wife, who ran the clinic’s office. Mrs. Mann went straight to a computer in the room and looked up news reports of the bombing on the Internet, Riley said.

“She said, ‘Well, I guess we will get a visit paid by the authorities,’” Riley recalled her saying, in reference to her husband’s known difficulties with the board, which suspended his license to prescribe controlled substances three years earlier and declined several of his attempts to have it reinstated.

Riley testified that a week later, he returned to the clinic for another appointment with Mann, who he referred to as “Doc.” He said Mann told him then, “Gerald, did you ever think that the bombing did exactly what it was supposed to do, which was to make him suffer?”

At times over the previous couple of years, Riley told the jury, Mann had told him, referring to the board, that “they are making me suffer.”

During those times, Riley said, becoming emotional at the memory, “I remember my heart going out to him. ... I respected the man, and I loved him as a friend.”

But he indicated he was taken aback by his friend’s comment about Pierce suffering.

Through a surge of tears, Riley said, “Nobody deserves to suffer like that.”

Asked by defense attorney Erin Cassinelli Couch if Mann, who is Hindu, may have simply been talking about karma, the idea that “what goes around comes around,” Riley responded, “I don’t know. I never thought of it that way.”

Riley testified that Mann had often complained that the medical board unfairly suspended his license to prescribe controlled substances, hurting his ability to make a living, and had remarked atleast once that, “They should experience suffering like I am suffering.”

Mann believed the medical board treated him unfairly because, although he was an American citizen, he was born in India and in their eyes wasn’t an American, Riley said.

Randeep Mann, now 52, was arrested on the evening of March 4, 2009, after the execution of a state search warrant at his home yielded evidence that authorities said connected him to the buriedammunition canister filled with 98 live grenades. The evidence included another ammunition tin with the same lot number as the buried tin, andgrenade launchers capable of firing the 40mm grenades found inside the buried tin.

Riley testified that Mann had occasionally talked to him about shooting “smoke grenades,” or practice rounds, from a launcher into Lake Dardanelle, behind the Manns’ house.

On March 5, 2009, Mann was charged in a federal criminal complaint with possessing unregistered “weapons of war,” and was ordered held in federal custody, where he hasbeen ever since.

After her husband’s arrest, Riley testified, Sue Mann called him to ask if she could “bring something over” to his house.

Within 20 minutes, he said, she showed up on his doorstep with a manila envelope about three-fourths-inch thick with rubber bands wrapped around it.

“She asked if I would hold it for her,” Riley testified. “She said it was bank statements and records.”

Riley said he agreed and put the envelope in his bedroom closet without looking inside.

The next day, Mrs. Mann returned to his house to pick up the envelope, he said.

“She told me she was sorry that she had brought it to me and she thought it would be best if she took it back,” he said.

Riley told jurors that on April 19, 2009, he received a visit from agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who asked him about the package.

Not long after the agents’ visit, he said, Mrs. Mann and her eldest son, Dan, went to his house and “both expressed how sorry they were that they had gotten me involved in this. ... She told me they would hire an attorney for me, that I didn’t need to tell the ATF anything. I told them thanks but no thanks, I didn’t feel like I needed an attorney.”

Riley said he told Mrs.Mann about the agents’ visit, and she was stumped as to how they knew she had taken the envelope to Riley’s house.

Answering that question, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gordon then entered into evidence a series of DVDs that contained recorded telephone calls, apparently from wiretaps on the Manns’ phone that had intercepted the call to Riley.

Riley said Mrs. Mann also told him that her husband wanted him to give a greenammunition canister that he and Mann had purchased at the gun show to another friend of his and Mann’s, but the other man didn’t want the canister.

Jurors also began hearing Wednesday from David Oliver, an ATF agent who investigated Mann after the bombing. Oliver testified that the day after Mann’s arrest, he went to the Manns’ home a second time, this time on a federal search warrant, and seized a spare tire and rim that had been spotted during the previous search, sitting in a shower stall off an upstairs bedroom.

Oliver testified that Mrs. Mann told him “the tire was in the shower because her husband was cleaning rust off of it.”

Identifying the tire in the courtroom, Oliver noted that he never found any rust on it.

He said agents seized it because it could have been used by the bomber to practice setting the tire bomb.

Oliver said agents theorized that the bomber “didn’t just put it there without practicing, because he might have blown himself up.”

The trial resumes at 9:30 a.m. today before U.S. District Judge Brian S. Miller in Little Rock.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/22/2010

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