Warehouse yields shabu chemicals

GUIGUINTO, Bulacan — Police swooped down on a warehouse here yesterday and seized shabu chemicals which could reportedly produce P40 million worth of the prohibited drug.

Senior Superintendent Felizardo Serapio, provincial police director, said the bodega was part of the shabu laboratory raided by joint elements of the Central Police District and Bulacan police in Barangay Tiaong here last week.

Serapio said the warehouse in Barangay Tabang yielded 45 crates each containing four gallon-containers of liquid ephedrine, hydrochloric acid and acetone, believed to be shabu precursors.

He said the chemicals could produce P40 million worth of shabu, computed at P2,000 per gram of the finished shabu.

Serapio said the warehouse, allegedly owned by one Lucila Mesina, was rented from a certain Piana Chua sometime last October, at about the same time when one Jaime Chua rented the place where the shabu laboratory was uncovered in Barangay Tiaong.

The warehouse also contained boxes of noodles, the making of which the police believe was just the drug syndicate’s front.

No one was arrested in yesterday’s raid.

Police seized about P50 million worth of shabu chemicals and equipment in the Barangay Tiaong raid.

Serapio said yesterday’s raid was the result of intelligence reports about suspicious deliveries, mostly at night, to the raided warehouse.

Earlier, Bulacan Gov. Josefina de la Cruz vowed to support the Arroyo administration’s campaign against illegal drugs and directed the local police to unmask other shabu laboratories in the province.