Neighbor shocked by meth lab arrests on quiet street

An MDEA haz-mat team works to dismantle an alleged meth lab operation on Hersom Lane on Wednesday. (Windy Rudnicki photo)

LEBANON - A neighbor of the two Lebanon residents arrested in a meth lab operation on Tuesday said he never would have suspected the pair of any such drug activity and that it was a total shock to those who live on this quiet dead-end street off Center Road.

Dana Lovely, 39, and Carin Polk, 52, of 13 Hersom Lane, were both charged with felony trafficking in methamphetamine, accused of operating several so-called one-pot meth labs inside their modest mobile home at the corner of Hersom and Center.

Lovely is currently being held at the York County Jail on $2,500 cash bail while waiting to see if he can be accepted into a bail program, while Polk has been released on personal recognizance.

The road was surprisingly quiet on Thursday afternoon, and the neighbor said in the 10 or so years he's lived there, that's the way it usually is. He said he hadn't interacted much with either Lovely or Polk and that they mostly kept to themselves.

Maine DEA agents, armed with a search warrant, entered the house Tuesday night around 10:30 p.m. and say they found a number of one-pot methamphetamine laboratories as well as the ingredients and components required for manufacturing methamphetamine.

The York District Task Force said it had been investigating the alleged operation for several months leading to the arrests.

Maine Drug Enforcement Agency's Clandestine Laboratory Enforcement Team was called in to dismantle the laboratories.

On Wednesday around noon, the team re-entered the residence utilizing special safety equipment and removed three, one-pot methamphetamine laboratories. Each lab was in a distinct and separate stage in the manufacturing process, a MDEA press release noted.

This is the third meth lab related incident MDEA has responded to this year. MDEA responded to 28 Methamphetamine Laboratory related incidents in 2014.