Tire rigged to explode, experts testify

LITTLE ROCK — The explosion that was triggered when Dr. Trent Pierce of West Memphis picked up a spare “doughnut” tire he found resting against his vehicle’s front bumper the morning of Feb. 4, 2009, was caused by a hand grenade duct-taped to the tire, a government explosives expert testified Wednesday.

A piece of string found embedded in a piece of burned duct tape indicated that the homemade bomb was probably rigged to explode when the tire was moved. Moving the tire caused the string to pull out the grenade’s pin, said Lloyd Erwin, a forensic chemist at a government laboratory in Atlanta who has 42 years’ experience with explosives.

Inside the black, hand held MK3A2 grenade was a high-grade explosive known as TNT - trinitrotoluene - that exploded with such force that it knocked two gold teeth out of Pierce’s mouth and left some of its components imbedded in his skin, according to other government witnesses.

The military-style grenade differed from the 40mm grenades, which require grenade launchers to propel, that authorities found partially buried a month later in a wooded area near the Pope County home of Dr. Randeep Mann, who is on trial in Little Rock federal court accused of orchestrating the bombing.

But prosecutors say Mann had access to the type of grenade that nearly killed Pierce, now 55.

Mann, 52, operated a medical clinic in Russellville and was under investigation for athird time by the Arkansas State Medical Board, which Pierce headed. Mann faced the possibility of losing his medical license if the board determined that he had been dispensing controlled substances without prescriptions.

On Wednesday, jurors hearing a second day of testimony against Mann, who is facing trial along with his wife, Sangeeta “Sue” Mann, 49, saw graphic photographs of Pierce that were taken shortly after the early morning explosion, as doctors worked to save his life.

The photographs showed Pierce’s face so blistered and raw that it was hard, at first glance, to discern his eyes from his nose and mouth. They also showed arm and leg injuries so deep that blood drenched bones were exposed. X-ray photos showed a forearm bone split cleanly in two, the suspended halves jutting toward each other.

Jurors also saw the bumper of Pierce’s white Lexus sport utility vehicle, which prosecutors placed in front of the jury box, and the small Nissan spare tire with a bent rim, a large chunk of rubber missing and its back side blown out. No one has testified where the tire may have come from.

Throughout the day, starting with testimony from Dean Fitzgerald of the Shelby County, Tenn., regional bomb squad, witnesses educated jurors about explosives.

Fitzgerald, a certified bomb technician, said that when the squad first arrived at Pierce’s home at 411 Avalon about two hours after the explosion, two bomb-detection dogs were dispatched to determine if the bomber had rigged a secondary blast - a common ploy in case the first bomb fails.

Fitzgerald testified that grenade parts that he found in a flower bed near Pierce’s Lexus told him that the device had a “military-style activation” with a built-in four- or five-second delay between being triggered and actually exploding.

The Lexus was parked in Pierce’s cobblestone driveway, facing the street. A raised flower bed bordered the driveway, and on the other side of it, a stone wall partially blocked the view of the house from the street.

Fitzgerald testified that he found the tire in a courtyard beyond another stone wall on the opposite side of the driveway.

He said black residue on the vehicle’s bumper showed that the tire had been resting against the front bumper of the vehicle, on the driver’s side, and wasn’t on the driveway, when it exploded.

The type of grenade used, he said, is designed so that “if you throw it in a small, enclosed building, it’s almost guaranteed to kill everyone in there.”

According to Fitzgerald and Erwin, who is with the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ laboratory in Atlanta, the tire contained residue from duct tape. Erwin showed jurors an indentation in the tire the size of a grenade that, he said, was left by the blast.

He used a deactivated MK3A2 hand grenade to demonstrate to jurors the size of the device and how it works.

While defense attorneys challenged his and other witnesses’ conclusions about the type of explosive that caused the blast, Erwin said it’s “possible” that the blast components came from a grenade manufactured in a foreign country. He said he was almost certain the device used was an MK3A2 grenade, which is not available to general consumers.

He said he examined some pieces of the grenade’s safety clip that were found embedded in Pierce’s left shoe, as well as in his jaw. He said the string - also referred to as a piece of yarn and a white synthetic cord - was determined not to have come from Pierce’s clothing or any other item believed to be at the scene.

“Something had to be there to pull that safety clip to cause that grenade to activate,” Erwin testified. He speculated that even a nail lying in the driveway could have held the string until Pierce picked up the tire.

The trial, being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Karen Whatley and Michael Gordon, is to continue at 9 a.m. today before U.S. District Judge Brian S. Miller. Defense attorneys are Erin Cassinelli Couch, Blake Hendrix, Jack Lassiter and John Wesley Hall Jr.