BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — The Kern County Sheriff’s Office says a large residential methamphetamine conversion lab has been dismantled.
On October 30th, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office and the KC-HIDTA Task Force executed a search warrant at a home on Rian Noelle Court, near Meadows Field. They found and seized about 954 pounds of methamphetamine and more than 2,700 pounds of the drug in liquid form.
Sheriff Donny Youngblood with the Kern County Sheiffs Office says, “I would say it’s probably the biggest. In my younger career I worked narcotics — and if you had a five or ten-pound methamphetamine case, you had a huge case. This one is over nine-thousand pounds. This is an enormous amount of narcotics that are killing our youth.”
Three suspects — Christian Castro, Kymberly Lopez-Garcia, and Jesus Felix-Castro — were stopped on Highway 99 with about ten pounds of meth. Two others — Fausto Zazueta-Beltran and Casimiro Violante-Lopez — were arrested at separate locations.
All five now face multiple charges — including manufacturing, possession for sale, transporting drugs, maintaining a drug house, and conspiracy.
“Geographically, Kern County is at the hub of Highway 99, I-5, the 58, the 14, and the 15 going east — which makes us a prime target for distribution.” Sheriff Donny Youngblood said.
The Sheriff’s Office says large-scale operations like this are becoming more common — adding that this is the sixth conversion lab KC-HIDTA has dismantled this year.
Sheriff Donny Youngblood says, “In the last 18 months, we’ve seized 3,513 pounds of finished product.”
Madi: “Is that different from previous years?”
Youngblood: “About a thousand times more.”
Authorities say these numbers are some of the biggest they’ve ever seen.
If you have information on this investigation, you’re urged to contact investigators.
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