A 52-year-old man from Van Buren County, Michigan, severely burned his hands in a meth lab explosion in his mother’s garage earlier this month. This was not the man’s first encounter with meth. In 2007, he was sentenced to more than two years in prison for possession of meth.
The man’s mother, who was unaware that her son used her garage as a meth lab, was awoken to the explosion around 5 a.m. Her son was screaming in pain and she found him with badly burned hands. She said he appeared to have no skin left on the palms of his hands. The police would later find several of his fingernails near the explosion site. At the hospital, he was reported to be in stable condition.
According to police, the hospital staff called authorities when the man informed them that his injuries were the result of a meth lab fire. Later, the police found common meth lab ingredients including cold medicine, camp fuel and batteries in the mother’s garage and inside her house. According to man’s mother, the police told her that given the ingredients they had located and the debris left behind at the scene of the fire, they believed her son was manufacturing meth for sale and had been doing so for a prolonged period of time.
The prosecutor’s office had yet to conduct a formal investigation or press charges. A conviction for manufacturing meth in Michigan can carry a 20-year prison sentence. Van Buren County has become a hotbed for meth manufacturing in the state of Michigan, so the man involved in the accident should begin contemplating his defense even before his injuries have time to heal.
Source: WOOD-TV, “Meth lab fire victim: I blew myself up,” Ken Kolker, May 7, 2012
