Deputies: Suspicious vehicle leads to mobile meth lab | Crime

Officers with the Lexington County Multi-Agency Narcotics Enforcement Team, Lexington County Sheriff’s Department and Irmo Police Department arrested a 51-year-old Columbia man on charges that he operated a methamphetamine laboratory.

Deputies say on Friday, Oct. 5, officers arrested 51-year-old Daniel Christopher Parrish and seized a mobile clandestine methamphetamine laboratory that was being operated in the tool box of a blue 1995 Dodge Ram pickup truck that was parked at a storage business on Lake Murray Boulevard near Irmo.

At about 1:30 a.m., deputies responded to a call concerning a suspicious vehicle that was parked at the storage business, the report said.

Deputies say they saw Parrish run towards the blue 1995 Dodge Ram pickup truck, get in the vehicle and then put the vehicle in reverse.

The report said deputies blocked the truck’s path with their marked patrol cars, ordered Parrish to put the vehicle in park and exit the vehicle.

Deputies say they found a black plastic container that commonly is used to store film for a camera on the floorboard of the pickup truck on the driver’s side of the vehicle. Deputies also found a small plastic straw in the plastic film container.

Officers also discovered a small plastic bag in the container that contained a white powder that deputies determined was methamphetamine, the report stated.

The report said that deputies detected a strong chemical odor emanating from the tool box in the bed of the pickup truck that they recognized from their training as an indicator that a mobile clandestine methamphetamine laboratory was being operated in the vehicle.

Deputies requested assistance from NET officers in investigating the methamphetamine laboratory. NET officers later dismantled the mobile clandestine methamphetamine laboratory, the report stated.

Parrish was arrested on charges of manufacturing methamphetamine and possessing methamphetamine.

Parrish was being held on Friday at the Lexington County Detention Center while awaiting a bond hearing.