GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — A major bust by local and federal agents in Gwinnett County has stopped meth from hitting local streets, and Channel 2 Action News was the only TV station in Atlanta that was there as authorities made arrests.
The DEA agent in charge told Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne that the house agents raided Tuesday night in a joint HSI-DEA case housed a dangerous meth conversion lab linked to a huge haul of meth off a tractor-trailer elsewhere, and it is tied to a cartel based in Mexico.
DEA special agent in charge Robert Murphy says investigators discovered about five kilos of suspected meth at the house, but it pales in comparison to what authorities swarmed around earlier Wednesday in Newton County on a tractor-trailer that he suspects had begun its journey in Mexico.
“(They seized) approximately 1,100 kilograms of liquid methamphetamine,” Murphy said.
“That’s about 2,400 pounds?” Winne asked Murphy.
“Yes,” Murphy said.
“Enough for thousands and thousands of individual doses?” Winne asked Murphy.
“Yes,” Murphy said.
Murphy said the suspected liquid meth was not in liquid form but soaked into foam in the lining of the trailer and dried.
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“It was soaked in a foam that was lining the ceiling of the trailer and, it appears as well, it was lining the walls. And we’re still trying to get into that to see if it’s actually lined with meth or not,” Murphy said. “I never ceased to be amazed by the ingenuity that these cartels have to smuggle meth into our country and to help them peddle poison on our streets.”
But Murphy, who said three arrests have been made, told Winne that the form the suspected meth was in on the trailer told them something else:
“It means there’s a conversion lab here in metro Atlanta,” Murphy said.
And he said that brings us back to the house in the Duluth area.
“We identified a second location involved in this operation,” Murphy said.
He said at the house, agents discovered propane, strainers, acetone and more.
Murphy suspects that the liquid could be extracted from the foam at the house, cooked to remove chemical impurities and processed into meth that could be sold on the street – a dangerous process.
“For all the reasons that makes Atlanta a great place to do business, it also makes it a great place for the Mexican cartels to do drug trafficking,” Murphy said. “We could not have been successful without the help of the Newton County Sheriff’s Office and (The Georgia State Patrol).”
Murphy said just weeks ago in Ellenwood, DEA seized hundreds of pounds of meth and found another dangerous conversion lab.
He said the poundage that could’ve been produced from the tractor-trailer would be less than the weight of the meth-soaked foam after it was processed, but still enough for hundreds of thousands of doses.
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