Helotes Man Paul Moses Alden Accused of Planting Snap Fireworks Under Wash Tub Toilet Seats

San Antonio-area police say a Helotes man planted small commercial “snap” fireworks under toilet seats at Wash Tub car-wash restrooms so they would pop when a customer sat down. Paul Moses Alden, 46, was arrested August 1, 2024, and charged with arson causing reckless damage to a building or causing bodily injury. Two women and a young girl suffered minor injuries, police said. He posted a $50,000 bond the same day. He is presumed innocent unless a court finds otherwise.

The devices were not pipe bombs. They were novelty snaps, the kind sold to crack under a shoe or a tire, hidden where a stranger would put body weight. That is the part that pulled a local arson affidavit onto national desks. A public restroom is a forced pause. The next person through the door does not get to inspect the underside of the seat. Investigators allege Alden understood that and came back to watch.

Three visits, two car washes, one membership card

The first reported blast was July 20, 2024, at the Wash Tub on Bandera Road in Helotes, Alden’s hometown just outside San Antonio. An arrest affidavit described by KENS 5 says a man entered a unisex restroom on camera. Moments later a woman used the room and a small explosion went off. She was slightly hurt and left before officers were called. That delay is common in restroom cases. People assume a pipe burst or a prank and drive away. The camera does not drive away.

About six days later, a Wash Tub on North Loop 1604 in San Antonio logged two loud bangs from the bathroom while an employee and a child were using it. The employee reported pain and a minor burn. A young girl was also hurt. Debris at the scenes matched the same class of novelty firework, police said. Three restrooms. Two addresses. The same pressure-activated product.

Security video described in the affidavit shows a repeating pattern: a man entering and leaving the restroom, sitting in the lobby watching the bathroom door, then leaving quickly after the pop. Staff identified Alden as a regular through his membership card. Investigators said the same person, the same membership, and the same vehicle — reported as a 2024 Ford F-150 Raptor — were placed at all three incidents. A Wash Tub representative thanked the San Antonio Police Department and the arson investigator and said the company would keep working with the district attorney.

Why a “snap” still gets charged as arson

Texas arson statutes do not require a building to burn to the ground. Reckless damage or bodily injury is enough when a person uses an explosive or incendiary device in a way that endangers others. A novelty snap under a toilet seat is small chemistry with a large targeting problem. The next occupant might be an adult employee, a customer, or a child. In this affidavit, police say all three categories were hit. That is why the charge is not written as a joke and why The AEGIS Alliance is not writing it as one.

Bexar County records cited at the time of the arrest noted a 1995 arson count in Alden’s history. A three-decade-old mark is not proof of the 2024 allegation. It is why detectives and editors both asked whether this was a first impulse or a habit. The live evidence in 2024 was the membership trail and the lobby camera, not a yellowing jacket from the mid-1990s.

Car-wash restrooms are a soft target for a reason. They sit on the edge of a business that sells time and water, not security theater. Doors are unlocked because customers need them. Cameras cover the lobby more reliably than the stall. A person with a membership card can walk in looking like a paying regular. The alleged method turned that ordinary access into a pressure plate.

Bond, headlines, and a quiet Bexar County docket

Alden walked out the day he was booked. A $50,000 bond on an arson-with-injury charge is not a finding of innocence. It is a judge deciding that the accused will appear. After the August 2024 arrest, the case drew national headlines because the alleged targets were ordinary customers in a public restroom, not a locked industrial site. Through 2025 and into 2026, no widely reported trial verdict or guilty plea appeared in national coverage. That absence is not an acquittal. It means the charge remained a pending criminal allegation in Bexar County unless and until a court record says otherwise.

Pending cases create a reporting problem that tabloids ignore. The affidavit is a police narrative. The indictment, if one issued locally after the arrest, is a grand-jury narrative. Neither is a trial. The AEGIS Alliance is keeping the allegation in the present tense for that reason. Readers who want the next hard fact should watch Bexar County criminal filings for a disposition, not social media recaps of the original lobby stills.

There is a second public-safety file attached to the same summer. Novelty explosives are legal to sell in many states when they are used as designed — dropped on a sidewalk, not taped under a stranger’s seat. Retail legality is not a defense to planting them on a toilet. Fire investigators already spend their year on lithium packs, garage workshops, and stolen catalytic converters. A restroom snap is a smaller blast with a nastier intent question: the alleged goal was not property damage. It was the body that sat down.

Car-wash chains that run 24-hour memberships also run 24-hour bathrooms. That business model is why a person with a key fob or a barcode can look like a customer while planting a device. It is also why Wash Tub’s public statement after the arrest stressed cooperation with SAPD and the district attorney. The company cannot padlock the stalls without losing the service it sells. The alleged crime used that constraint as a feature.

The AEGIS Alliance files unusual public-safety cases under crime news and odd news, and the Texas angle under U.S. news. Related reporting from the same week includes a Tulsa living-room fire started by a chewed lithium power bank — another small consumer object that became a household hazard — and the Bronx homicide in which remains were moved in a shopping cart onto a Metro-North train. Different statutes. Same lesson: everyday objects become evidence when somebody decides a stranger is the target.

Planting even a “snap” device under a toilet seat is, if the affidavit is proven, a calculated attack on whoever sits down next. One of those people was a child. That fact survives every joke the internet tried to hang on the stall door.