Both the alleged victim of the December 2021 Kelayres bombing and the estranged wife of the man accused of detonating that bomb testified during the first day of the Ladell Hannon attempted murder retrial.
Hannon is a former Hazleton police officer who, on Dec. 21, 2021, is accused of detonating a homemade bomb outside the front door of the apartment of Harrison Jordan, of Kelayres, Kline Township.
A trial earlier this year ended in mistrial. The retrial got underway on Monday morning in Courtroom 1 at Schuylkill County Courthouse with President Judge Jacqueline Russell presiding.
Here are some of the highlights and key points during Day 1 of this retrial …
Day 1 Recap: Ladell Hannon Attempted Murder Retrial
During his hour-long opening statement, Schuylkill County Assistant District Attorney Michael Stine told jurors that he’s going to present a case based primarily on circumstantial evidence.
“There’s not going to be any smoking gun,” Stine said. “You’ll have to put the evidence together like a jigsaw puzzle.”
Stine hopes that evidence will lead to jurors to believe that Hannon stalked Jordan and his estranged wife, Danielle, for several months before setting off an improvised explosive device outside the home of Jordan during the early morning hours of Dec. 21, 2021.
He also wants jurors to find Hannon guilty of burglary for an incident that allegedly happened about two months prior to the explosion in Kelayres.
The prosecution intends to prove that Hannon purchased the supplies necessary to build and detonate the IED and also GPS devices to stalk his wife. Stine told jurors during his opening statement that Hannon also conducted searches that should lead jurors to believe that Hannon researched the potential impact of his bomb.
Defense attorney Mark Hinrichs, based on his brief opening statement and his questioning of witnesses on Day 1 of the trial, intends to lean heavily into the prosecution’s own admission that its case is mostly circumstantial.
For instance, with Jordan on the stand during the morning session of the first day of the retrial, Hinrichs questioned whether or not he actually saw Hannon sitting in his white Honda Accord on several instances in which Jordan said he was being stalked by the defendant.
In an Oct. 5, 2021 incident at a Sheetz in Hazle Township, Hannon is accused of showing up at the store during a time when Jordan and Danielle Hannon were meeting after attending an EMS class in Nanticoke. Jordan and Danielle Hannon have the same job as paramedics for Lehigh Valley Hospital-Hazleton.
When Hinrichs suggested that Ladell just happened to be at the same place and the same time, Jordan said, “I don’t believe he just happened to be there.”
Hinrichs asked, “You only saw the car; you didn’t actually see him?”
Jordan said that’s true.
“It’s possible he got there before you,” Hinrichs asked.
Jordan said, “Unlikely.”
In direct testimony, Jordan testified that he entered into a relationship with Danielle Hannon starting in July 2021. He said he was stalked by Ladell Hannon on several occasions prior to the bombing incident.
Two of the incidents – on Oct. 5 and Oct. 19 – happened at that Hazle Township Sheetz location, where he and Danielle Hannon met after attending job-related classes in Nanticoke.
Jordan said Ladell Hannon showed up both times but there was no one-on-one encounter. In the first instance is when Jordan said he spotted Ladell Hannon’s vehicle in the parking lot but didn’t see him.
On Oct. 19, 2021, Jordan said Ladell Hannon entered the store while he was attempting to buy food but said he exited the store when he saw the defendant enter.
After that Oct. 5th encounter, Jordan said he made the decision to not stay at his home that night, instead opting to rent a hotel room in Wilkes-Barre. He did so after receiving a call from Danielle Hannon, following the Sheetz incident, saying Ladell had called her and she felt that Jordan would be safer not at home that night.
Jordan said he stayed at a hotel close to where he had a clinical rotation the following morning in Wilkes-Barre. He went home, first, to gather some clothes.
On Oct. 6, when he came home, Jordan testified that there was evidence that someone was in his home while he was away. He said his clothes were not in a neat pile, his electronics were unplugged, and a sheet of paper with Danielle Hannon’s name and phone number was missing.
Then, on Oct. 14, Jordan said Danielle was staying the night at his Kelayres apartment. They were asleep and awoke to a continuous banging at the front door.
Jordan testified that he did not answer the door but believed it was Ladell Hannon, though he admitted to not looking outside to confirm.
In testimony later, Danielle Hannon testified that she received a phone call from Ladell at about the same time as the banging on the door was happening. She first ignored the call and then answered.
She said she asked Ladell where their two children were. He reportedly told her to come outside and she’d find out where the children were.
During cross-examination, Hinrichs asked Jordan how he knew it was Ladell who urinated on his car that night, which Jordan testified to during his direct questioning from the prosecution.
Hinrichs asked if it could have been a dog that urinated on his car, to which Jordan said, “Big dog.”
Jordan also testified that after these incidents, he got a Wyze security camera from a co-worker and placed it in his apartment facing his front door.
On Oct. 28, Jordan said he got a notification on his phone from that camera indicating there was a person in his home.
Video of that incident was shown to jurors, showing a person entering through the front door of what is presumably Jordan’s apartment.
In other testimony, Pennsylvania State Police investigator Shawn Tray said he believed the man who entered Jordan’s home was Ladell Hannon due to a reflective strip on the pants worn by the intruder. Tray said that stripe matched a stripe shown on Ladell’s Hazleton police uniform.
Hinrichs attempted to poke a hole in that assumption by pointing out a potentially missing tag on the pants that’s visible in the video but not seen in the uniform photo also shown to jurors.
That night, Jordan and Danielle stayed at a Wilkes-Barre Red Roof Inn hotel. Jordan said he declined to press charges against Ladell because he knew that Ladell was supposedly watching the couple’s children that night and “didn’t want to ruin that part of their setup.”
Ladell and Danielle had separated in August 2021. Danielle later testified that she had wanted to divorce Ladell since 2019 but didn’t file for divorce until August two years later. That divorce is still not final. In the months between filing for divorce and the explosion at Jordan’s home, the couple had worked out an arrangement for child custody on their own.
Following the break-in at his apartment, Jordan also testified that he thought he saw Ladell’s Honda Accord in Kelayres on several occasions. He said he could identify it because of an empty license plate holder on the front bumper.
Despite all those incidents involving potential stalking, Jordan said he didn’t press charges against Ladell.
There was even a confrontation between the two outside his apartment on Dec. 11, when he and Danielle planned to go to Steamtown Mall in Scranton so she could purchase a Christmas gift for her one daughter.
They never made that trip because Ladell, according to both Jordan and Danielle’s testimony, showed up within minutes after Danielle had arrived in Kelayres and an argument ensued.
Ladell confronted Jordan and repeatedly asked, “Are you (bleeping) my wife?” Jordan said that during the argument, Ladell cocked his fist back as if he was going to throw a punch but never did.
Jordan testified that he ultimately did decide to press charges against Ladell for that Oct. 28 break-in at his apartment after the explosion.
“I believe he tried to kill me on December 21st,” Jordan testified.
On that morning of the bombing, Jordan testified that he went outside early in the morning and noticed a bucket near his front door. At first he thought it was trash and it was a weird place for trash to be located.
When he turned back and saw the bucket again, Jordan said he saw that the bucket was smoking. He said he tried to quickly run away from the bucket, going toward a nearby truck when the explosion happened.
Jordan said the impact of the explosion knocked him to the ground.
Audio from the 9-1-1 call Jordan placed moments after the explosion revealed a frantic situation on Center St. in Kelayres. Jordan was screaming at first that a bomb had gone off and that he was injured in his legs and head.
Jordan also testified during the first day of the trial that he still has concrete embedded in his back and shrapnel in his head and that he still suffers from hearing loss.
Following the explosion, Jordan was taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Hazleton by ambulance before getting a medical helicopter transport to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest.
The injuries he suffered, Jordan said, caused him to miss seven months of work.
Danielle Hannon testified during the afternoon session on Monday. She said she went to State Police-Frackville barracks following the explosion to tell troopers that she believed she’d been followed.
During his opening statement, Stine said the prosecution has evidence that Ladell purchased six GPS trackers.
The key part of Danielle’s testimony came when Hinrichs pressed her on why she didn’t tell police on Dec. 21, while she was being questioned at the Frackville barracks, that she believed it was Ladell that was responsible for the explosion at Jordan’s home.
In fact, she testified that it wasn’t until September 2023 that she finally changed her story to say that she believed Ladell was responsible for the explosion.
During her direct testimony, Danielle explained her two stories by saying, “The way I was feeling, he was responsible for the explosion. I had a kid in school and another at a friend’s house.”
Earlier in her testimony, Danielle testified that after she learned of the explosion, she went to retrieve her one daughter from Ladell and later picked up the second daughter from school, even though Ladell was supposed to be in custody of them both that day.
As she answered Stine’s question on why she didn’t tell police, Danielle broke down in tears for about a minute on the witness stand.
“It came down to, I didn’t know where Ladell was. He knew where I was,” she said. “I didn’t know what was going to happen next.”
She said that she told police a different story in September of last year.
“I was afraid of some type of retaliation,” Danielle said. “My silence wasn’t stopping it. I wasn’t feeling safe.”
In both their testimony, Danielle and Jordan said their relationship went through a bit of a lull following the explosion but they now live together.
During her cross-examination, Danielle testified that prior to Dec. 21, 2021, she hadn’t filed for a Protection From Abuse order against Ladell and that she wasn’t concerned about him until that date.
She said that Jordan “wasn’t exactly honest with me about the extent of things (between the two men).”
Danielle said she figured Ladell was just upset with knowing about her extra-marital relationship but that he would get over and stop what he’d been doing.
Day 2 Preview
As Day 1 of the Ladell Hannon retrial concluded, jurors were seeing photos from the scene of the explosion on Center St. in Kelayres from the morning of Dec. 21, as taken by State Police.
More crime scene evidence is expected to be presented during Day 2 of this trial.
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