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PROVO — Police Saturday were looking for a person of interest who they say may have been cooking methamphetamine out of his apartment near BYU.
Roommates were first alerted to the situation when a fire broke out in a room at the Riviera Apartments, 1501 N. Canyon Road, Thursday.
A smoke alarm brought two roommates to a room in their apartment, where they and the occupant of the room extinguished the flames. The occupant said the fire was caused by some rubbing alcohol he spilled without realizing it, said his roommate Nicholas Zarate, who helped put out the fire. The young man left that night, saying he was going to visit a friend in the hospital.
Zarate was curious about the amount of damage from the fire so he picked the lock on the room door with a hairpin.
"At that point they saw suspicious glassware and chemicals and they contacted Riviera management," said Provo Police Lt. Brandon Post.
Methamphetamines can cause explosions, large fires and emit deadly gasses, so it is fortunate the incident was not worse, he said.
Responding police and fire officials identified a "fully operational" meth lab in the man's room around 3 p.m. Friday, according to Post.
"It wasn't one of the smaller 'shake and bake' labs that are a little more common," he said.
Officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration came to clean up the lab and the Utah Department of Health quarantined the apartment Friday. It will have to undergo an "extensive cleaning process," before other occupants can live there again, Post said. Other apartments in the complex were not affected.
The occupant of the room has not returned since the fire, Post said. According to Zarate, the man is a student at Brigham Young University. Police are treating him as a person of interest and said they will not release his name until they have more information. A warrant was not issued Saturday.
The other roommates are not considered suspects, Post said, because "their actions were reasonable." They did not have access to the room with the meth lab inside and called apartment management when they found out.
"If you've got something that's overly suspicious that you're concerned about, call us. We can come out with the fire department and assess the situation," Post said.
