Tip leads to meth lab bust in county (Missouri)

By Joey Vaughan
jvaughan@cdispatch.com

A tip that a Lowndes County man was buying precursors led to the bust of a methamphetamine lab by Lowndes County Sheriff's and Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics agents, authorities said.

Lewis Perrigan, 47, of 536 Ward Road, was arrested Tuesday around 1:15 p.m. by LCSO narcotics agent Ivan Bryan and an MBN agent after he bought precursors at the Southern Family Market on Alabama Street.

“I had received tips and information on this guy manufacturing meth at his house,” Bryan said. “When his name popped up on the tip, I followed him to a couple of stores.”

After his arrest on the possession of precursors charge, Perrigan gave Bryan consent to search his mobile home. There, agents found Perrigan had a “shake-and-bake” meth operation, Bryan said.

Shake-and-bake is a method of making meth that involves combining the ingredients in a plastic bottle and shaking them to form the drug.

“It was a pretty good-sized lab,” Bryan said. “The problem with shake-and-bake is we're not getting the tremendous smell we used to get on cooking labs in the county. It's hard to find it because you can hide it in a two-liter bottle. He had his in a Tropicana fruit bottle.”

More traditional labs where the ingredients were cooked emitted an odor that often could be smelled from some distance.

LCSO narcotics agent Joey Brackin said Perrigan didn't have “a lot” of meth Tuesday, but it was apparent the lab had been in operation for some time.

“He had so much stuff where he had been making it in the past,” Brackin said. “It was quite a setup.”

The agents called in a meth lab processing service from Birmingham to clean up the site. Because of the volatile nature of chemicals used in making meth, rank-and-file law enforcement officers do not clean up the labs. Instead, agents trained in hazardous materials take care of those duties.

Bryan was at the scene until nearly 9 p.m. supervising the cleanup.

Perrigan is charged with possession of meth, possession of precursors and manufacturing meth.
http://www.cdispatch.com/articles/2006/08/16/local_news/area_news/area06.txt