Police Find Hidden Meth Lab on Hilltop

Ventura County narcotics detectives, state drug experts and federal agents scoured a rugged hilltop in the Santa Susana Mountains near Simi Valley for most of the day Tuesday before finding an illicit methamphetamine lab tucked away in a camouflaged trailer.

Sheriff’s deputies also arrested three unidentified transients ages 19, 23 and 47 who were found nearby, and booked them into the East Valley Sheriff’s Station in Thousand Oaks on suspicion of being under the influence of drugs.

The 19-year-old was also charged with possessing methamphetamine, but detectives have not linked the men to the lab, said Sgt. David Paige, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman.

Deputies began the day at a hillside ranch off of Black Canyon Road southeast of Simi Valley, armed with a search warrant. The warrant was based on a narcotics investigation that began several weeks ago after residents complained to police about people loitering and dumping trash in the area, Paige said.

At 7 a.m., heavily armed SWAT deputies and SWAT officers from the Ventura Police Department went onto the ranch, hiking up and down the rocky hillsides around the ranch’s hodgepodge of buildings and sheds to make sure no one was lying in wait, Paige said.

Then sheriff’s deputies, a drug lab expert from the state Bureau of Narcotics and agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms searched the buildings, while California Highway Patrol officers checked several old cars there to see if they were stolen.

Deputies found no evidence of any crime there beyond four marijuana plants, Paige said. But then they spotted the padlocked trailer covered with camouflage netting on a neighboring ranch, and obtained a second search warrant from a county judge in Simi Valley.

Deputies cut the door’s padlock with huge bolt cutters, then moved inside to find lab equipment and chemicals used in making methamphetamine, Paige said.

Firefighters then gingerly removed the toxic, sometimes volatile chemicals that are used to make methamphetamine. No methamphetamine was found in the trailer, and the lab “looks like it’s fairly new,” Paige said.