In a shed in Hellum, officers rolled up a drug lab on Wednesday evening. One suspect has been arrested near the property.
It is close to six o’clock when a gray BMW drives through the village. What’s going on here, one local resident wonders? “Suddenly, two officers step out of the car with guns in their hands.” Not much later it turns out that there was a drug lab in the neighbor’s garden.
One suspect arrested
The lab was hidden in a green metal shed, next to a residential house. Police report that the lab was operating and synthetic drugs were being made. What kind of drugs is not yet known.
An hour after the raid, officers arrest a suspect around the lab. It is not known whether this is also the occupant of the house. Not much later, the police tow away a motorcycle and a car. According to local residents, that is the car the resident was driving.
‘Such a friendly guy’
Local residents say that the shed in which the lab was found was built in January 2022. The occupant of the house next to the barn lived there for a short time. “A year or two, three.” He owns part of the lot. The second owner lives in Loppersum.
“This is not for him,” says a neighbor who is watching. “He was such a sweet guy.”
Drug labs in the province
The police previously indicated on DVHN that more and more drug labs are being discovered in the Northern Netherlands. Eleven laboratories were rounded up in 2022 in Groningen, Friesland and Drenthe. On August 22, Tess Abels (38) was found dead at a drug lab in Kiel-Windeweer.
The report was published in March of this year ‘Subversion in the Ommeland’ . In this report, researchers state that the Groningen countryside is vulnerable to drug criminals, among other things. According to the researchers, residents of the province do not have a high opinion of the government. They prefer to do their own thing. Moreover, there are few police on the scene. The standard is one community police officer for every 5,000 inhabitants.