PLANTATION (CBSMiami) — The lock down is over, and guests are back in their hotel rooms after a full-scale hazmat scare in Plantation led police to a man’s body inside a suspected meth lab.
“It’s been characterized as a very crude operation, what they call like a shake and bake,” said Lt. Aston Bright with Plantation Fire Department, as he described the discovery of some sort of illicit drug lab at the La Quinta Inn on the 8100 block of Peters Road in Plantation.
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“The chemicals are contained to that one room, some of chemicals were off gassing they were still processing in some fashion,” added Lt. Bright.
According to officials this all began with a call for an unresponsive adult male and when Plantation Fire arrived on scene, they found a deceased man in his mid-30’s whose identity has not yet been released. While investigating the situation they discovered the illicit drug lab. Officials say with no way of knowing how the chemicals would impact those close by, the entire hotel had to be evacuated.
“I was in there for approximately 10-15 minutes literally about to get ready just like getting acquainted bringing all my stuff in the room and then boom evacuation,” said hotel guest Anthony Black.
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“It’s one of these nutty things you never know what would happen I just want it to be over with, that’s all. It’s really shocking,” added another guest Stephen Goldberg.
It took Broward County Hazmat Team several hours to clean up and contain the hazardous material and while officials could not confirm it, some speculate this was a makeshift meth lab.
“Our understanding is this was a more crude operation more than likely for personal use, type deal, so it wasn’t like an industrial type scale operation. We would consider it an illicit lab of some sort and again the investigation is still ongoing,” added Bright.
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Officials have not yet confirmed the cause of death for the person found in the room, but they do suspect drug overdose.
