Daily BrewB.C. man arrested after allegedly cooking meth on his barbecue
Walter White and Jesse Pinkman would be rolling their eyes at this guy. The cops certainly are.
Police in Abbotsford, B.C., arrested a man on the weekend for allegedly cooking up a batch of methamphetamine on the barbeque on his apartment balcony.
Shrimp on the barbie, brats on the barbie. Meth on the barbie?
Police showed up Saturday night after complaints of a bad smell coming from an apartment and a man yelling at neighbours in what sounded like Russian, CTV News reported.
"We had smelled the fumes earlier in the day and it was pretty strong [and] closed the windows,” Leslie Pambrun, whose family lives in the suite below, told CTV News.
“Then I got a heads up from another person that lives here that the cops were coming in and about midnight there was the dog, the cops, and they busted down the door . . . it was pretty crazy."
When the cops showed up, the 32-year-old man hid in his apartment. Police used a search warrant to enter and arrested him, the Abbotsford News reported.
[ Related: Mobile meth lab catches fire after crash ]
With unknown chemicals involved, police called in the fire department to decontaminate the suspect, who was washed down before being taken into custody, the News said. The RCMP drug lab was helping police in the Fraser Valley city with the investigation.
As anyone who's ever watched Breaking Bad knows, the first rule of making meth is you keep your cook on the down-low.
"[It’s] an unusual one,” police spokesman Const. Ian MacDonald told CTV News.
“Most people like to keep their drug production and meth labs a secret as opposed to . . . bellowing out to people and calling out to people from their patio while they're in midst, allegedly, of making the drugs themselves."
This hiding in plain sight strategy obviously doesn't work, but meth labs can turn up in some surprising places, according to PBS Newshour.
Police in Columbus, Ohio found an active meth lab in the backpack of a cyclist they pulled over after he peddled through a stop sign.
Police even found a 20-ounce pop bottle being used to cook meth in a woman's purse after she was arrested for shop-lifting at a Wal-Mart in St. Louis.
A similar "shake-and-bake" meth cook resulted in an explosion at an Ohio nursing home that killed a man, PBS Newshour said. Another was discovered in a portable toilet at an Oklahoma golf course.
Hotel rooms are often used as clandestine labs because they're easy to abandon, leaving a toxic time bomb for staff and future guests.
And just like in Breaking Bad, RVs are turned into rolling labs.
No place is safe, really. Police in Davenport, Iowa, found a daycare provider was cooking meth in the same house as the children were staying. It was exposed after a child who'd been complaining of headaches, trouble sleeping and other problems tested positive for meth.
Even a church kitchen has been used, Newshour reported. The congregation of a small church near Fargo, N.D., was surprised in 2004 by a police raid that uncovered a meth lab in the kitchen set up by a man who'd broken into the building.
"I'd prefer that our kitchen be used for bake sales, but in addition to being pastor, I'm also the fire chief," said Pastor Dave Sobek, according to Fox News.
[ Related: Toy meth lab inspired by ‘Breaking Bad’ sells out online ]
Back in Abbotsford, MacDonald said operating a meth lab in a busy apartment complex is highly risky.
"It's obviously a recipe for disaster," he told the Vancouver Province.
The chemical contamination caused by the cooking also presents a potential toxic threat to future occupants of a building used as a lab, PBS Newshour reported. Everything from carpets to drapes and air ducts could be contaminated.
Like former marijuana grow-ops, these places are risky real estate buys.
PBS Newshour cited a report in Scientific American, which said contractors who specialize in cleaning up meth-lab houses estimated 90 per cent of such operations are never uncovered, meaning the next occupant won't know they've moved into a toxic home.
