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Mesa meth lab found at home owned by parents
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Pipe bombs and methmaking equipment were pulled from a Mesa house late Wednesday as police arrested a man suspected of cooking the drug there.
Robert Lobue, 23, was living at the house at 1256 N. Gentry owned by his parents and making methamphetamine in his bedroom and a backyard shed, said Maricopa County sheriff’s Lt. Rich Burden.
“Robert’s parents are very wholesome people,” Burden said. “As far as I’m concerned, they have no play in the meth lab or the explosives.”
Two pipe bombs and a dead, empty grenade were found inside the house, Burden said.
The sheriff’s bomb squad used a robot to remove the bombs from the house and were expected to dismantle them later, using a water cannon.
Lobue’s arrest came after more than a month of investigation, Burden said. The lab appeared to be small, a “mom and pop or a Beavis and Butthead lab,” Burden said, and was probably used to supply meth to just Lobue and a couple other users.
Lobue was kept at the scene hours after his arrest. At one point, sheriff’s deputies left him unattended in the back of a locked police cruiser with a window down, allowing reporters to speak to him.
Sheriff’s deputy Doug Matteson said investigators believe Lobue is mentally unstable.
Lobue told reporters satellites were controlling his brain and said those satellites made meth, not him. “I get in trouble for doing something I didn’t do,” he said.
Lobue also said he had previously been treated for mental illness.
Matteson said Lobue was kept at the scene instead of being taken to a holding facility to help investigators find any hazards and explain the layout of the house. He added that Lobue had been cooperative.
The man has a past that included arrests for marijuana possession, meth possession and assault, Burden said.
The investigation and bust were executed by the multiagency High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area unit, led by the sheriff’s office.
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