As meth cooked in a van during rush-hour traffic, the driver was unconscious, cops say

While meth was cooking in a blue van, a driver was unconscious and “slumped over the wheel,” troopers with Michigan State Patrol said.

A spokesperson with the department told WDIV that troopers received several calls about the man at northbound M-10 and I-94 during rush hour in Detroit.

Drivers only thought the man needed help — they didn’t know methamphetamine was cooking in the van, the TV station reported.

When troopers arrived, though, they found a one-pot meth lab in the van, according to a statement posted on Twitter. That was at about 4:10 p.m. Monday.

“It’s very dangerous,” an officer told WDIV. “A lot of lives could have been lost if there was an accident on the road.”

One-pot meth labs are “highly mobile” and use less chemicals, time and equipment, but they are “highly explosive,” according to the Ohio Department of Health.

While in the mobile meth lab, the man had overdosed and troopers found him unconscious, according to the tweet.

The troopers then gave the man NARCAN, a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses, and he was taken to a hospital, the tweeted statement said. The man was later pronounced brain dead.

While on scene, the department’s meth lab response team recovered the cook from the one-pot meth lab and disposed of it. A one-pot meth lab is “just a bottle filled with chemicals, it’s used to make meth,” Leslie Earhart with the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office told WCYB in 2013.

In a photo posted by Michigan State Patrol, you can see that a green Mountain Dew soda bottle was used to make meth in the van. Troopers said the chemicals were no longer active when the photo was taken.

This story was originally published July 31, 2018 at 11:10 AM.