Stone Park police were questioning a 50-year-old man Thursday after discovering chemicals used to make methamphetamine inside his apartment on the 1500 block of North Mannheim Road, officials said.
Officers responding to a domestic disturbance call at 11:13 p.m. Wednesday found a woman later identified as the man’s cousin inside the two-bedroom, second-floor apartment and discovered powdered and liquid chemicals in a bedroom closet, police said.
The suspect left in his car before officers arrived but was found nearby at 2 a.m. Thursday, police said. His cousin was questioned but later released.
Stone Park Police Cmdr. Louis Fatta said investigators believe the man, formerly from Kentucky, was setting up a home laboratory in order to produce methamphetamine, or meth, an illegal and highly addictive stimulant long popular in rural America.
Police also found several meth recipes and a collection of chemistry glassware–including funnels and beakers–and bunsen burners inside the apartment, authorities said.
“It was clear that he was amassing these products to begin producing” the drug, said Gary Boertlein, spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Chicago office. Federal agents and a west suburban hazardous materials team assisted in the investigation.
Chemicals recovered from the apartment include lithium, a cyanide derivative and a crystallized form of ammonia, Boertlein said. Several unknown chemical compounds also were removed from the home, he said.
Police said the lab lacked at least one important chemical component needed to manufacture the drug, and no meth has been made inside the apartment.
Other residents of the 11-unit courtyard building, around the corner from a “gentlemen’s club” and just a block and a half from the Stone Park Police Station, were evacuated about 2 a.m. They were allowed back into their homes early Thursday afternoon, police said.
The suspect told investigators he has some formal education in mixing chemicals, but police said he did not have a degree in chemistry and has never worked as a chemist.
He moved into the building two months ago, and officers had been called to the apartment at least once before during a fight between the man and his cousin, police said.
Police said the man has facial scars and is missing parts of several fingers and believe these injuries may have been suffered in an earlier drug lab accident.
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Edited by Curt Wagner (cwwagner@tribune.com) and alBerto Trevino (atrevino@tribune.com)
