METH LABS KEEP REAPPEARING, DISAPPEARING

Officials Shut Down Five, With One Repeat

OAK RIDGE - Authorities have busted five illicit methamphetamine
laboratories in less than 48 hours, including a lab set up in a
retirement center apartment, Anderson County authorities said.

According to Anderson County Chief Deputy Lewis Ridenour, six people
were arrested in connection with the series of raids, which began late
Wednesday night in Morgan County and continued Friday morning. A meth
lab found in an abandoned house on Windrock Road near Oliver Springs
was dismantled Friday, Ridenour said.

Two of the suspects in separate raids are women who were serving
sentences on the weekends in the Anderson County Jail for earlier
convictions.

"They were out during the week cooking meth and spending their
weekends in jail, recovering," said Ridenour.

Two of the illegal labs were in the same trailer park in the Coalfield
area of Morgan County. Another was being operated out of a trailer on
Big Mountain Hollow Lane that was raided less than a week earlier for
a similar illicit lab, Ridenour said.

The meth lab in Frank Callaghan Towers, a retirement community in Oak
Ridge, was set up in one apartment by the daughter of the resident,
who was in the hospital, Ridenour said.

Members of the Southeastern Methamphetamine Task Force, a federally
funded team of law enforcement officials based in Clinton, have now
raided 21 meth labs in Anderson and Morgan counties this year,
Ridenour said.

Authorities are struggling to cope with a rising epidemic of the
primitive labs, which are easily portable, he said. Methamphetamine
can be made from store-bought substances, but the production process
is highly explosive and creates poisonous byproducts, Ridenour said.

Arrested at the retirement community apartment were Regina Healey, 18,
and Michelle Moore, 28. In addition to felony drug-making charges,
they were charged with felony reckless endangerment because there were
neighbors next door, Ridenour said.

"They (the suspects) didn't seem to care about endangering the lives
of these people," he said. "All the elderly residents kept thanking us
for shutting down this lab."

Arrested early Thursday in separate meth lab raids in a trailer park
on Fairview Road in Coalfield were Lisa York, 34, and Benny Chris Lowe
Sr., 47.

Charged in connection with the Wednesday night raid on a Big Mountain
Hollow Lane trailer in Morgan County were Francis Sloan, 32, and
Debbie Fox, 47, both of whom had been serving weekend jail sentences
for earlier convictions, Ridenour said.