DRUG CUTS UGLY SWATH ACROSS STATE

A Look At Just A Fraction Of The Human Toll Caused By Texas' Meth
Problem: Small-Town Police Surprised No One's Been Killed

COMANCHE - Meth's alarming effect on this West Texas farm town: two
officers shot in "rolling gun battles" just in the last six months.

A parole violator and drug user tried to shoot a Comanche police
officer with a 12-gauge shotgun earlier this month, then wounded a
sheriff's deputy, Mitchell Best, in the left shoulder with buckshot
after police responded to a domestic disturbance.

The gun battle spilled onto the streets and ended only after Albert
Fred Marino, 33, ran out of ammunition. Police found meth in his
pockets, said Comanche Police Chief Ron Moe.

Last September, a different wanted felon and drug user tried to pistol
whip a city officer and then blasted another city officer and a
sheriff's deputy with a stolen shotgun, the chief said. That suspect,
Michael Scott Townsend, 41, ran from house to house trying to escape
police and didn't realize he'd been shot in the buttocks until
officers managed to wrestle him to the ground.

Mr. Townsend warned police that he had a needle in his pocket.
Officers found a syringe with liquid meth.

Chief Moe said the incidents are only the most extreme indicators of
the drug's encroachment into his town of 4,482 and surrounding
Comanche County, where dairy farms provide easy access to anhydrous
ammonia used in illicit meth labs.

"I'm surprised we haven't had somebody killed before now," he
said.

First state trooper shot in 2005

TERRELL - State Trooper Robert Mendez was trying to coax a twitchy
passenger with a pocketful of methamphetamine from a minivan when he
became the first state trooper shot in 2005.

Trooper Mendez was shot in the arm about 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 21. He and
his partner pulled the minivan over on U.S. 80 for a busted
license-plate light. The driver couldn't produce a driver's license,
so the trooper asked passenger David Glover, 34, of Dallas, to step
from the van.

Mr. Glover admitted he had methamphetamine in his pocket but dove into
the van's open window, grabbed a 40-caliber Sig-Sauer semi-automatic
pistol and began shooting as the trooper tried to arrest him,
officials said.

He fought for five minutes, firing the pistol three times and hitting
Trooper Mendez in the upper right arm. Trooper Mendez, a two-year
veteran, was released from a hospital the next day.

Mr. Glover was jailed in Kaufman County, where authorities said he
died March 5 of an apparent suicide by hanging. Investigators
determined that the pistol he used against the trooper was stolen in a
January burglary in Dallas, along with a cache of weapons and other
valuables recovered in the van.

Officials said the van's license plate and registration were stolen,
and it carried a large load of mail stolen from the White Rock Lake
area, as well as stolen computer equipment that Mr. Glover was
apparently using for identity theft.

Amped users of the drug have killed three Oklahoma troopers since 1999
and a second-generation sheriff in Kansas in January. The Oklahoma
slayings prompted strict limits there on sales over-the-counter cold
medications used to make meth. Texas and Kansas are among the states
now considering similar laws.

A 6-year-old boy's death in a meth fire

ANSON - Someone is arrested with meth every day in Jones County.
Authorities say it was just a matter of time before someone died
cooking the drug.

The victim was a 6-year-old boy. Colton Blain Denler's parents and
grandparents now face murder charges.

The mobile home where Colton and five siblings lived with their
parents outside Anson burned dawn March 3, 2004. Police said everyone
else escaped, including Colton's grandparents, who lived in nearby
Abilene and had a history of meth arrests.

The boy's body was found in a closet, where he apparently had tried to
take refuge. A burned meth lab was found in another room.

The boy's parents, Russell and Amy Dentler, and his grandparents,
Lonnie and Patsy Teague, have pleaded not guilty.

Chief Deputy Felix Ortiz said his county has been infested with labs.
Thirty-seven were seized in 2003 and 32 last year.

"And that's just from neighbors calling," he said, adding that only
one deputy patrols the 1,000-square-mile county per shift.

The problem is worst in the south of the county, where an impenetrable
mesquite thicket known as the Shinnery draws Abilene outlaws, he said.

"It's all we can do just to keep fighting it."

Parents accused of injecting teenager

LUFKIN - Fifteen-year-old Candice Alexander is hardly the youngest
Piney Woods kid afflicted by meth.

"We've had 9-, 10-year-olds using," said Angelina County District
Attorney's Investigator Ron Brandon. "We've had kids turn in their mom
and dad for using. We've had 'em call Crime Stoppers."

But it was Ms. Alexander's death in May 2003 from an injected overdose
of the drug ­ allegedly at the hands of her mother and stepfather ­
that horrified even veteran cops in the deep East Texas county. Police
put an entire task force of local police and sheriffs deputies, Texas
Rangers and federal agents on the case after the girl was declared
dead on arrival at a hospital.

It took more than a year of working drug snitches and gathering
evidence to indict the girl's mother, Rebecca Lee, and her stepfather,
Johnny Lee, in July 2004 on murder and drug charges. Mr. Lee, a local
man with a long drug rap sheet, was convicted on federal gun charges
last fall in connection with the case.

The couple say they are innocent and are expected to be tried later
this year.