About 8 a.m. on February 4, 2009, Dr. Trent Pierce walked out to his Lexus sport utility vehicle to warm it up for the ride to work. Oddly, there was a spare tire propped against the front of the car.
Dr. Pierce leaned down to move the tire.
The explosion threw Pierce 6 feet into a flower bed. It embedded shrapnel in his neck and abdomen, broke one of his legs and one wrist, destroyed his left eye and burned 18% of his body.
It also peeled back the driver's side of the car. The blast was heard up to one mile away.
When agents from the ATF analyzed the bomb they said it was a homemade device, not military-grade.
Dr. Pierce, 54, was chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board. According to its official website:
"The Medical Board's mission is to protect the public and act as their advocate by effectively regulating the practices of Medical Doctors, Osteopathic Medical Doctors, Physician Assistants, Medical Corporations, Respiratory Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Occupational Therapy Assistants, Radiology Practitioner Assistants and Radiologist Assistants.
The Medical Board serves as the State licensing and regulatory agent for these occupations in the State of Arkansas."
The Board regulates over 8,000 doctors, 3,000 therapists and 400 osteopaths. In his role as Chairman, Dr. Pierce would cast the deciding vote in cases where Board members could not reach a consensus.
Dr. Pierce also had a thriving private medical practice, seeing 68-80 patients per day.
After more than 15 hours of emergency surgery, Dr. Pierce regained consciousness and mouthed to his wife, What happened?
By then, Arkansas State Police investigators and ATF agents had descended on the little town of West Memphis (pop. 28,000) and were asking the same thing.
Their first move was to examine decisions made by the Arkanasas Medical Board, looking for practitioners who had been disciplined.
One of those doctors was Dr. Randeep Mann.
According to the Arkansas Times:
"Mann has a history of problems before the medical board for overprescribing pain medications to patients -- investigators linked eight deaths to Dr. Mann, though he said not all of them were his patients -- and prescribing methadone without the proper clinical license. His DEA license was revoked in 2003 for one year and in 2006 for an indefinite period and his efforts to get the license restored have been unsuccessful.
At a hearing before the board in 2003, when the board revoked Mann's license for prescribing methadone, Pierce was the only doctor to vote against the stay, predicting the board would be seeing Mann again. In 2007, when Mann went before the board seeking reinstatement of his DEA license, Pierce was quoted in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette as telling Mann not to bother seeking reinstatement of the DEA license "in any forseeable time frame ... because you don't need one, doctor." "
Unfortunately, Dr. Mann had attracted the attention of other authorities as well.
On February 4th, 2009, State Police Investigators and ATF agents had interviewed Dr. Mann. During that interview, Dr. Mann showed the investigators an M203 grenade launcher that he legally owned. Dr. Mann was also a federally-licensed weapons dealer and collector.
This hobby would soon draw him into the Dr. Pierce case.
On March 3, 2009, workers for the city of London, Arkansas slipped into the woods near Dr. Mann's home to urinate. One of them tripped over something half-buried in the ground. The worker dug the object up and it proved to be a military canister wrapped in plastic and sealed with tape. It contained 98 40mm HE, M406 grenades- a type that can only be legally possessed by the military.
They are also the type fired by the M203 grenade launcher Dr. Mann had shown the authorities on Feb. 4.
The workers called the local Sheriff's office, which in turn contacted the ATF. A search warrant was obtained and agents of both offices searched Dr. Mann's property. They discovered $50,000 in cash, 5 more canisters of grenades, and 110 machine guns worth $1million.
Eventually, all the machine guns would be proven to be legally registered to Dr. Mann, but he was arrested on weapons charges for possession of the grenades. He pleaded innocent at his arraignment.
From this point onward, Dr. Mann's life -and the course of the Pierce car-bomb investigation- would become more and more complicated.
On March 11th, U.S. Magistrate Judge H. David Young deemed Dr. Mann a flight risk and ordered that he be kept in jail until his trial on the weapons charge. ATF Special Agent David Oliver testified at this same hearing that Dr. Mann's father, Kuldip Mann, was an international arms dealer and that both father and son had freqently crossed the U.S. border since 2007. Dr. Mann's attorney ridiculed this claim, saying that Kuldip Mann was an invalid suffering from prostate cancer and many other ailments who needed a wheelchair to get around. He also pointed out that a practicing physician such as Dr. Mann had no time for the extensive travel described by agent Oliver.
Judge Young appeared skeptical of some of the ATF charges but ordered Dr. Mann returned to jail without bond. Dr. Mann is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in India, and the judge said that Dr. Mann's family connections in India and his recent transfer of money to that country made him a flight risk.
By April 17 Dr. Mann- still imprisoned and awaiting trail on the weapons charge- decided to sue the Arkansas Medical Board and many of its individual members, including Dr. Trent Pierce. He charged that the board was prejudiced toward him because he was a Hindu and an Indian. At the same time, Dr. Mann became the target of a wrongful death suit brought by the family of one of his patients.
By April 18, Dr. Mann had been formally indicted on weapons charges and faced a possible $10,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison. On April 22, he pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Dr. Mann was now the defendant in two legal cases and the plaintiff in another.
On August 8, Dr. Mann and his wife, Sangeeta, were indicted on 7 counts of obstructing the Federal probe into his weapons collection. Sangeeta Mann was accused of lying to a Grand Jury and attempting to hide several signed, blank checks. Two new weapons charges were added- possession of an unregistered 12-gauge shotgun and an unregistered 7.62mm machine gun.
A detention hearing was held for Sangeeta Mann on Monday, August 10. While it was determined that she was not a flight risk, at that hearing ATF agent Grover Crossland announced that Dr. Randeep Mann was now the prime suspect in the bombing of Dr. Trent Pierce. Sangeeta Mann was released to her own home on the provision that all weapons be removed.
On August 28 the date of Dr. Mann's trial for unlawful possession of weapons was moved to March 15, 2009. While he remains the prime suspect in the Pierce bombing, he has not yet been charged with that crime.
The multiple legal actions swirling around Dr. Mann and his wife make this case difficult to follow. A few points stand out:
- Dr. Mann was a licensed gun collector and dealer. While it may seem unusual to some people for a man to have a million dollars' worth of weapons in his home, he was legally entitled to do so. Only 2 guns were found to be unregistered.
- The grenades found buried on Dr. Mann's property cannot be lawfully kept by anyone outside the military.
- None of these weapons- the guns or the grenades- has any connection to the bombing.
- The bomb that exploded in Dr. Pierce's driveway was not military grade. It didn't even contain dynamite. Investigators said it was a homemade type of device. Thus far no one has connected any evidence from the bomb scene to Dr. Mann or his property.
- Dr. Mann fell under suspicion in part because his prescription privileges had been revoked by the Arkanasas Medical Board. He is now suing that board- and Dr. Pierce in particular- for allegedly acting out of anti-Hindu, anti-Indian bigotry.
- Yet at the same time, Dr. Mann is being sued for wrongful death and has been accused of overprescribing powerful drugs to his patients.
This collection of circumstances can be looked at as either implicating or exonerating Dr. Mann. Comments left by readers beneath local news stories show that he has fierce advocates and equally fierce detractors.
But as of today no one has directly connected him to the bombing on February 4.
On August 7, Dr. Trent Pierce returned to his work as Chairman of the Arkansas Medical Board.
"This board," he announced, "has not and will not be intimidated by any type of threat."
But the exact nature of that threat- and who made it- is still in question.
References
Affidavit in Case of Dr. Randeep Mann/Arkansas Online
March 5 Affidavit Against Randeep Mann
Character Witnesses on Stand for Accused Doctor/Daniel Shea, AP
Jailed Doctor Randeep Mann Sues Arkansas Medical Board/AP
Dr. Randeep Mann is Car Bomb Suspect/a11news.com
Doctor Injured in Bombing Says "Not Intimidated"/Stephanie Scurlock/WREG.com
Doctor is Prime Suspect in West Memphis Car Bombing/Chuck Bartels, AP
Jailed Doctor Named Prime Suspect in Bombing/WREG.com
Russevllville Doctor's Weapons Trial Moved to March/Arkansasnews.com
Tires, Files Examined in Trent P. Pierce Car Bombing Case/AP
A Town Takes a Car Bombing to Heart/Robbie Brown, NYT
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