ATF agent details 'blast scene' in home during Daniel Aikens' trial for Alexandria bombing

Two Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents testified Wednesday in the federal trial of Daniel Dewayne Aikens of Alexandria, one tying together how three bombs worked and the other identifying Aikens as the man behind at least one.

As Special Agent Andrew Erdmann talked about surveillance video from a Mobil gas station across MacArthur Drive from the now-closed PayDay Today business, Aikens began to cry and shake his head.

Erdmann said the video showed a man he identified as Aikens drive up to gas pumps in a white Jeep Cherokee on the morning of Jan. 2, 2020, and walk inside while talking on a cellphone. As he enters the store, he glances out the door in the direction of the loan business.

A bomb exploded near the business while a male caller was on the telephone with a female employee, who testified on Tuesday that the man knew her name, her address, where she lived and threatened to kill her three children if she didn't go to a bank and get $10,000.

Aikens was arrested four days after the explosion at PayDay Today. He has been indicted on eight charges — three counts of making a destructive device, three counts of possession of a destructive device in violation of the National Firearms Act, one count of using an explosive to commit a federal felony and one count of conveying malicious false information.

Prosecutors allege he also is responsible for two other explosions, one outside an Alexandria convenience store Dec. 20, 2019, and the other outside a Monroe beauty school Sept. 12, 2019.

Two teams of agents had been searching for the Jeep near PayDay Today, and one found it at a Tennessee Avenue home. Erdmann said it's about three-tenths of a mile from the home to the PayDay Today building.

With the license plate, they identified the Jeep's owner as a Plain Dealing woman and found she had a son who lived in Alexandria — Aikens. Erdmann said they matched a photo of Aikens to the video from the Mobil station, and they believed he was their suspect.

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But investigators wanted to watch Aikens before taking him into custody, he said. That changed when Rapides Parish Sheriff's deputies spotted the car on the night of Jan. 6, 2020, and stopped it. Aikens was taken into custody and interviewed at the Alexandria FBI field office.

"He was normal. He didn't appear to be nervous," Erdmann said of Aikens' demeanor during the interview.

Aikens agreed to speak with agents, and he denied being at locations connected to the PayDay Today bombing. He said he did do some plumbing, but didn't work with pipes. Erdmann testified Aikens told them he used to reload his own ammunition using smokeless black powder but hadn't done that in about 10 years.

He did say Aikens became agitated at the end of the interview, when he was asked for permission to search his Tennessee Avenue house. Erdmann said, when Aikens turned his head, he noticed his right temple "pulsing rapidly."

Aikens' defense attorney, Wayne Blanchard, asked him if Aikens got upset after being told he was being arrested on a charge of extortion, and Erdmann said he had been told that and asked for permission to search the home around the same time.

Aikens refused to give permission for the search, so agents got a search warrant. They removed Aikens' son from the home that night and executed the warrant the next day.

Erdmann described a "blast scene" in Aikens' kitchen. He said the space where a stove should be was empty and that the drywall in the space was gone. Wooden studs in the wall behind the space were broken and splintered, a vent hood was hanging, and there was a large hole in the ceiling tiles above the area surrounded by smaller holes.

He said pipe fragments were recovered both inside and outside the home. ATF chemist Andrew Hawkins, who also testified Tuesday, testified again on Wednesday that he found double-based smokeless black powder particles on pipe fragments taken from the home.

He earlier had testified that double-based particles means nitroglycerin had been added to the powder.

The first agent to testify Wednesday, explosives enforcement officer Gary Smith, explained for jurors how each of the three devices worked. The first, detonated outside Cloyd's Beauty School in Monroe, was triggered when about 140 feet of fishing line attached to the pressure cooker bomb was pulled.

The other two were pipe bombs.

The first pipe bomb exploded outside the former U-Pak-It Texaco station on Jackson Street Extension. The second one was the PayDay Today bomb, and Smith testified that it was rigged with a remote control circuit board and receiver taken from a model helicopter sold at Walmart.

Erdmann said that was one of the reasons agents spent a lot of time canvassing the area around the business, because they knew the suspect had to have been close enough with the transmitter to set off the explosion.

Aikens' defense, which has not cross examined most of the prosecution's witnesses, objected repeatedly as video footage that reportedly showed him buying the cellphone used in the last two explosions from a Dollar General store off Horseshoe Drive in Alexandria on Dec. 19, 2019.

Most of the objections were overruled, and Erdmann was allowed to state his opinions on it.

But another defense objection related to the cellphone brought testimony to a halt on Wednesday afternoon. Blanchard objected when John Parker, a retired Louisiana State Police technician who performed a data extraction on the device, started to tell jurors what AT&T reported about its purchase.

After a lengthy sidebar, U.S. District Judge Dee Drell told jurors they would have to resolve the issue and that they were released for the day.

Testimony is set to begin again at 9:15 a.m. Thursday after attorneys convene at 9 a.m.

In addition to Blanchard, Aikens is represented by Natalie Jihad Awad. Prosecutors are U.S. attorneys Jamilla Bynog, LaDonte Murphy and Daniel McCoy.

This article originally appeared on Alexandria Town Talk: ATF agent IDs Daniel Aikens as man behind 2020 PayDay Today bombing