The bathrooms at the front of a Walmart in Muncie, Indiana are going to be closed for awhile, no thanks to a man who used one of them to operate a meth lab.
Late Thursday night, a worker noticed a man walking through the store with a backpack, and remembered he’d bought several ingredients used to cook meth. He alerted police who were already in the store. The man ducked into the men’s bathroom, and came out shortly afterward–without the backpack. An Indiana State Police meth suppression team was called in, and found several tools used by meth cooks. Delaware County health inspectors sealed off both bathrooms, and with good reason. Corrosive acid had eaten through the bag and ended up in the bathroom. Both bathrooms will remain closed until they can be cleaned out by a company specializing in decontaminating meth labs. Any kind of exposure could put people at risk for being extremely sick, though there are no reports of anyone being sickened so far.
Police say it’s becoming increasingly common for meth cooks to leave the chemicals used to cook their wares in public places so they can come back and get the meth later. In the name of guarding against blowing up or contaminating their houses, they are putting innocent people in danger. Imagine what could have happened if a child had found this garbage, or if this stuff had exploded in the bathroom. In recent years, it’s become more common during the warmer months for bystanders to find toxic and corrosive meth trash, or even functioning meth labs.
Police are actively searching for the person who left the backpack, and Walmart has provided surveillance footage. I hope that if and when they catch this lowlife, they find a way to keep him in prison for as long as legally possible. Anyone who willfully endangers innocent people in this way has forfeited their right to live among us–period, full stop. If I were Walmart and the company that has to decontaminate the bathrooms, I’m seriously considering sending this guy the bill. If this is as common an instance as it looks, the only way to stop it is to make an example of someone who does it.
