Tyler

By KENNETH DEAN
Staff Writer

For 22 years, the ratty, dilapidated trailer has sat behind the Smith County Jail, but a father and son team took the metal structure — once used to manufacture methamphetamines — to be destroyed Monday.

Smith County Sheriff’s Lt. Larry Wiginton said the small trailer was confiscated during a drug operation in 1986 and had been sitting behind the jail since it was taken as evidence.

Inside the metal building were glass beacons, jars and other items used to cook meth.

Wiginton said it was probably the largest meth lab he had ever seen.

“I don’t know much about the case other than this thing has been in our custody for years and Judge Cynthia Kent recently signed the papers for us to get rid of it, so we are,” he said.

Wiginton, along with two Smith County Road and Bridge employees, helped Jerry and Heath Beck of Summit Environmental of Texarkana load the structure onto a flatbed trailer so it could be hauled to Texarkana.

“This is the largest meth lab I have ever seen,” Jerry Beck said. “What people don’t realize is that most meth labs fit into a large box and, well, this one is an entire structure.”

Beck said the trailer would be hauled back to Texarkana where crews would begin disassembling it and packing its pieces to be shipped to an approved landfill in Oklahoma.

Using a large piece of machinery and chairs, the road and bridge employees were able to maneuver the structure onto the trailer.

Wiginton said that, while the structure was contaminated, it has never posed any type of threat to the public.

“After this many years there is nothing really left in there that could harm anyone, but I still wouldn’t go inside and sit down for 30 minutes,” he said.

Wiginton said a recent scare at the Smith County Office Building where evidence from an old drug case started smoking was not related to the trailer.

In the case where the boxes were smoking, the entire building was evacuated while HAZMAT teams removed the evidence from the basement of the building.

Smith County Road and Bridge employ Billy Collins signals to the driver of the caterpillar removing a trailer used as evidence in drug case from behind the Smith County jail. The trailer, formerly used as a meth lab, has been sitting behind the Smith County jail since 1986.
(Staff Photo By Tom Turner)