EUSTIS, Fla. — A routine traffic stop early Wednesday morning led Eustis police to a working meth lab.
During the stop, a police K-9 unit alerted officers to the presence of the odor of narcotics. That led to a search of the vehicle where an officer found meth manufacturing components inside the vehicle.
AT THE SCENE: Suspected Meth Lab
The three people in the vehicle, 26-year-old Joey Brent Sands , 24-year-old Justin Christopher Elosage and 35-year-old Heather Lewis Herman, told police about the others in the apartment. Eustis police got help from Lake County sheriff's investigators, who said they found five people cooking meth in the apartment.
The five people are identified as 43-year-old Micheal Allen Widle, 22-year-old Melissa Noel Adler, 19-year-old Lacey Cecilla Samuels, 48-year-old Robert Joseph Benoit, and 18-year-old Shelley Lee Ashton.
The Lake County Sheriff's Office pulled chemicals out of a one-bedroom apartment at the Tanglewood apartment complex off SR-19 on Releme Street ( see map ).
The Lake County Sheriff's Office and Eustis police said they found enough meth cooking inside the tiny one-bedroom apartment to blow up the entire apartment complex and it was still smoking when they knocked on the door around 3:00am.
"I'm extremely mad, I'm really PO'd," neighbor Kaila Hine said.
Undercover deputies covered in protective suits removed camp fuel, acetone, a gas generator, lithium batteries, and coffee filters used to separate the chemicals that were being mixed in pots and water bottles.
Hine and her boyfriend live next door and were part of the group that had to be evacuated after the traffic stop led Eustis police to the apartments. They said they always suspected that something strange was going on in the home, where they've seen a young child.
"We heard banging on the walls like every night and we're like, 'What the heck is that noise?' So we knew something wasn't right and there was like five people living there, but I didn't think it was a meth lab," Hine said.
A Eustis police officer pulled over a vehicle on SR-19 just after midnight. Another officer with a police dog was there to back him up and they said the dog alerted them someone in the car had drugs. After some questioning, the three suspects led them to a meth lab, where they found the five people cooking meth.
"Did they look like drug heads over there?" WFTV reporter Daralene Jones asked Hine.
"One of them did, the lady that came over to ask for butter, you could always tell there was something not so right about her," she replied.
"Fortunately, they caught it before it got any worse," witness Clark Irizarry said.
Neighbors told WFTV they've seen a young child in the apartment before, but he wasn't there Wednesday morning.
Charges on the eight people arrested will range from possession of drug paraphernalia, manufacturing methamphetamine and possession/trafficking of methamphetamine.
Investigators had to condemn the apartment. They said the suspects were cooking meth there so long, it started to seep into the drywall and carpet.
The meth lab bust is the second one for Eustis this year. A spokesperson said the last one was in 2008.
However, Lake County has seen 20 already this year, and so far they're on track to have fewer than 2009, when there were 54.