The most artistic sign on the door of a house near Lilburn was a stork welcoming the newest resident. The most glaring sign was a hazard one right by it, warning people that the house was a meth lab.
Gwinnett police and federal agents raided the house this week and seized 50 pounds of methamphetamine and arrested four people, Channel 2 Action News reported Friday.
The drug was in liquid form — which made it harder to detect during smuggling — and was being converted into crystal meth at the house, according to the search warrants.
The mixture of children — including three toddlers and an older child — and a highly explosive drug stunned Gwinnett District Attorney Danny Porter.
“It is so dangerous and it presents so many dangers that I can’t conceive (of) people having children in there,” he told the news station. “The meth is coming in from Mexico. It’s being processed and prepared for market here. Some of it was being sold here and some of it was being transported out.”
Veronica Adem, a neighbor, told the news station that the house had a lot of vehicle traffic. Also, a strong odor had been coming from the house that she believed gave her roommate headaches.
“It was some kind of smell like some kind of poison, like someone was trying to kill something, like rat poison or something,” she said.
The raid on Tuesday in the 5000 block of Arrowind Road was the Gwinnett part of a long-term federal investigation into the smuggling and manufacture of methamphetamine.
Authorities charged Juan Perez-Maldonado, 36, Olegarrio Palacios-Pineda, 25, Norma Pineda-Palacios, 21, and Rocio Vasquez-Vega, 34, with trafficking in methamphetamine and first-degree child cruelty because the children allegedly were exposed to the toxic meth lab.
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