Last Friday, a drugs lab was discovered on the top floor of a building in Best by the new owner who had purchased the building only one day previously. A construction crane was necessary to transport the boilers, vats, and other material from the property.
Last Friday, the owner of the property was conducting an inspection tour of the building, together with a photographer and a real estate agent, in order to make plans for renovation and sustainability work. On the top floor of the building she happened upon a 46-year-old man amidst materials for the manuafcture of drugs. She smelled the faintly chemical scent and realised at once that something was amiss.
She remained calm and introduced herself as the new owner . Then she descended, together with the photographer and the real estate agent, and locked the doors. She notified the ploice from her car. The suspect jumped through a window and tried to escape, but the owner pusued him by car until the police arrived and arrested him.
Lab equipment
Police officers discovered a fully functioning drugs lab on the top floor, with boilers, vats, hoses and extraction systems. The exact nature of the drugs manufactured there has not yet been established. The LFO – the national dismantling facility- dismantled the lab and the vicinity was cordoned off for further investigation.
Spectacular clearing
It took all of Saturday for SEON, a firm specialising in the removal of hazardous substances, to remove all the materials. It remains a mystery how the suspect managed to transport all the materials to the fifth floor unseen, as many of the materials were too big to fit into the elevator. The police concluded that doors and window frames had been removed to get the materials inside.
Future
The owner is determined to carry on with her plans to turn the building into a set of offices. She had last been there only two weeks earlier when the top floor was still empty. Despite the incident she expects that the building did not sustain any serious damage so that renovation work can be resumed soon.
