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WE GOT TROUBLE RIGHT HERE IN RIVER CITY

Breaking Bad.
Not in Albuquerque. Not in a fictional version of New Mexico.
Nope.
Right in downtown Lake Geneva, and nobody noticed.
A meth lab.
Operating out of a small, unassuming, nondescript two bedroom house at 1134 Broad Street. A small group of people ran a meth lab for over a year without notice.

How does this happen? What happened to Neighborhood Watch and those kinds of programs? What’s the real story about what happened at this place, in this town and in this modern era? A quite wonderful 84-year-old woman named Angeline was having a bit of a tough time making it in her small residence on Broad Street. Not far from downtown, and with few relatives to help her out she was doing just fine but needed a bit more capital to be comfortable. So Angeline took in a border. One small (really tiny) bedroom upstairs was all she had to rent out. A pleasant young man answered her advertisement and gave her a deposit. That nice young man then set up his version of Breaking Bad, and went to work reorganizing the space into a meth lab. Today the home sits vacant, the nice young man is keeping company with others of his ilk at Walworth County Correctional (jail), and Angeline is staying with relatives until her place is detoxified and cleaned up.

There is also the question of Angeline’s health since the meth lab operated for quite some time. The chemicals and fumes from the production of this drug are unbelievably devastating for those exposed. The floors and walls of the home are suffused with those toxic chemicals. One might say that what happened here, near the very heart of the Lake Geneva downtown, could happen anywhere, but in this day and age of instant communication, and especially in a small town it has to be much more than simply uncommon.

People knew about this place and said nothing. Why? What was the clue or testimony that brought the FBI, DEA and Walworth County Drug Enforcement Task Force to the door? The conclusion that is inescapable is that crystal meth, as a drug of choice, is much more common in the Lake Geneva area than most people might think. The police report, when it becomes available, might shed some light on how this poorly disguised one horse crystal meth lab operated and was tolerated for so long.

Since a police officer lives only four doors down from the residence where the lab was located it is unlikely that the local residents knew anything. As far as Angeline herself is concerned it is unlikely her 84 year old nose picked up on any of the gases being emitted by this lab and her apparent awareness about such things was no doubt grounded in her life experience of years ago when there were no such things as meth labs or even meth itself (amphetamines were invented in the 1800’s but did not really come into wide usage until WWII when they were used to keep allied pilots awake for night missions). Crystal Methamphetamines are recent derivatives of earlier drugs, but enhanced for euphoria.

Statistically, most meth addicts never recover to lead normal lives. If you are ever exposed to this drug and consider taking it then please consider also that you are committing a slow agonizing form of suicide if you do.

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