• Home
• News
• Sports
• AP
• Blogs
• Citizen News
• Regional News
• E-Edition
• Forums
• Services
• Forms
• Events
• Classifieds
• Homes
• Jobs
• Autos
• MarketplaceOhio

Sheriff seeking meth suspect: 2 labs discovered in Brady Lake

E-mail Story    |    Print Story    |    Comments    |   

By Matt Fredmonsky 

and Mike Sever

Record-Courier staff writers

BRADY LAKE — Two suspected methamphetamine labs were found within a few hundred yards of each other Thursday almost simultaneously.

“I walked in on a lab in a rental unit that I was checking out for an owner after the tenants were evicted, and at the same time the sheriff’s department, maybe a quarter of a mile down the road, they had their own incident,” said Brady Lake Police Chief Jim Woolf.

The landlord called Woolf after finding suspicious materials in the vacant house at 6504 Lakeview Road, right next to the Village Hall.

“The first thing I noticed were the tell-tale signs of a meth lab, being the chemicals that are involved in the process, the matchbook covers that were stripped of their striker pads that are used in the manufacturing process and the chemical odor throughout the basement of the house,” Woolf said.

Since the house was vacant for a couple weeks, police are investigating to see if there was any access by anyone else, Woolf said.

When he got there, a painting crew hired by the owner was in the house.

“They didn’t realize they had a lab in the basement,” Woolf said.

He said the lab was not in operation at the time, although the chemicals and by-products of the process were still there.

Just down the way at 2037 Brady Lake Road, deputies had been making a check after a 23-month old child was found with suspicious stains on the bottom of his feet. The stains were the color of a substance used in the manufacture of methamphetamine.

While at the house, deputies saw suspicious items in the yard and obtained a search warrant. When they approached the house to serve the warrant, Larry D. Baxter, 29, fled out the back of the residence. He is still at large.

“We’re still looking for him,” Portage County Sheriff David Doak said Friday evening.

Anyone with information on Baxter’s location is asked to contact Lt. Greg Johnson of the Portage County Sheriff’s Office at 330-296-5100.

Jennifer A. Baxter, 23, was arrested and charged with illegal manufacture of drugs, a second-degree felony, and endangering children, a third-degree felony.

“The timing of it was quite strange,” Doak said of the dual meth lab busts. “There’s a lot of them out there.”

Woolf said the coincidence worked to advantage.

“We got a lot of help from the sheriff’s department because they were about 1,000 feet down the road at their own incident at the same time.”