Suspected Drug Lab Fire Damages West Covina Home

Police are searching for two West Covina residents whose home caught fire early Thursday morning in an apparent methamphetamine blaze.

Witnesses said they saw six people running from a one-story house on South Montezuma Way as it burst into flame. The group reportedly sped away in a beige car believed to be a Buick, said Battalion Chief Al Cheramie of the West Covina Fire Department.

According to neighbors, the owners of the home are believed to be on vacation in Mexico. It is unknown who was staying at the house, but witnesses said they had noticed “suspicious activity” for a few days.

“Guests would only come at night, and when they got there they’d back into the driveway,” Cheramie said. “It’s just unusual, different activity from what normally goes on.”

One of the fleeing individuals had a bandage on his right arm, an apparent injury from the blaze, Cheramie said.

From the outside, the home looks slightly smoke-damaged, but “not that bad,” said Roy Wilson, who lives a block away.

Wilson had just fallen asleep at about 1:20 a.m. Thursday when sirens blared through his neighborhood. Wilson didn’t know it then, but people who were staying in his neighbors’ home stored six trash cans in the house, a sign that this may not have been the first batch of methamphetamine cooked on his street, officials said.

“These people would have had to have been cooking this stuff up for 24 hours a day five, six, seven days to get that kind of waste,” said Cheramie, referring to the piles of sugar and cornstarch, byproducts of methamphetamine manufacturing, found in the backyard.

After dousing flames in the kitchen and garage, firefighters found the trash cans, which apparently contained acetone, ether and alcohol. Three of the containers could hold 40 to 50 gallons of liquid and the others could contain about 30 gallons, police said.