ELYRIA — Police arrested three Elyria residents after discovering what might be the first active DMT lab ever discovered in Ohio on March 22. The lab was being run in a utility room of an apartment at 228 Washington Ave.

Anderson Rush, 22, Benjamin Harvitt, 27, and Amura McFadian, 21, were indicted by the grand jury on charges of illegal manufacturing of a controlled substance, illegal possession of chemicals for manufacturer and illegal possession of the drug DMT. Additionally, McFadian was charged with endangering children, as her 7-month-old child was at the apartment.

Officers seized 50 grams of solid DMT and 60 milliliters of liquid, which has a street value of $6,800 for the solids alone, Lorain County Sheriff’s Office Narcotics Detective Olen Martin said.

Officers were investigating a separate case and interviewing Rush when the lab was discovered in his utility room. Martin noticed tubes on the ground and investigated. When he discovered the lab, he evacuated the apartment and the entire building.

According to Martin, six of the eight samples that the narcotics bureau drew from the lab came back positive. Those samples came in varying forms.

According to Martin, DMT is not a very popular drug within the United States. He mentioned that there are definitely pockets of use within the United States, but it is much more popular in Europe.

“This is the first DMT lab in the state as far as we can tell,” Martin said. “I put out feelers through the State Narcotics Officers Association and nobody replied. No one has seen it in Ohio.”

ELYRIA, Ohio - Neighbors say the stretch of Washington Avenue they live on, along the Black River in Elyria, is usually a quiet place, with a nearby church and library.
But what drug detectives found in a Brownstones apartment unit even surprised them.
On March 5, Lorain County sheriff's department detective Olen Martin had a few questions to ask a man living in one of the apartments about another case. That man invited Martin inside.
As the detective was walking through, he thought he saw a meth lab through an open door of a utility room.
Concerned about the safety of neighbors, and a 7-month-old baby girl living in the apartment, Martin asked the man about the jars, tubes and flammable liquids.

Martin said the man confessed it was a "DMT" lab made from cooked tree bark. The man claimed the lab belonged to his roommate.

DMT -- dimethyltryptamine -- acts as a psychedelic drug. Depending on the dose and method of administration, its effects can range from short-lived milder psychedelic states to powerful immersive experiences.

Martin immediately evacuated the apartment building, contacted the fire department and called for a chemical clean-up team while carefully collecting evidence. Chemicals used in this type of drug making process are volatile and could easily cause an explosion that could have leveled the entire apartment building.

Martin, who's been working in the narcotics unit for 26 years, said it's the first drug bust of its kind that he has ever made -- and the first one he knows about in the entire region, if not state.

Martin said he was trained to keep an eye out for this rare type of drug lab, but never expected to see one himself.

Buying the certain type of tree bark on the internet is legal, but grinding the bark down and "cooking" the powerful chemical into a hallucinogen is a first-degree felony.

Martin said DMT is considered a mix between PCP and LSD. DMT is a naturally occurring chemical released by the brain at birth and at death. But making the chemical from tree bark with ingredients that include paint thinner, drain cleaner and numerous other flammable liquids is both dangerous and illegal.

The three people living at the apartment -- Anderson Rush, 22, Benjamin Harvitt, 28, and Maura McFadian, 21 -- have all been indicted by the Lorain County prosecutor for illegal manufacturing of drugs, among other charges.
Martin said MaFadian was also charged with child endangering because the hazardous fumes from the chemicals were being vented into the living room, making the odor not able to be detected outside.
Earlier this week, NewsChannel5 was first to report the Lorain County drug task force also busted up a major PCP ring, taking $1.2 million worth of the drug off the streets.

Watch NewsChannel5 at 5 p.m. for a complete report on the tree bark drug lab bust.

ELYRIA — Lorain County narcotics officers stumbled upon the region’s first known lab used to cook the hallucinogenic drug dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, in an Elyria apartment that also was home to a 7-month-old baby.

The drug is made using the bark of an exotic tree combined with other lethal household chemicals.

Three Elyria residents — Anderson Rush, 22, Maura McFadian, 21, and Benjamin Harvitt, 27 — now face felony drug charges for making the drug, which law enforcement believes was being cooked for personal use and to sell. Each was indicted by a county grand jury late last week.

Charges include illegal manufacturing and cultivation of drugs, illegal assembly or possession of chemicals for the manufacturing of drugs, possession of drugs and possession of drug paraphernalia. McFadian was also charged with endangering children. She is the mother of the infant found just 10 feet from the makeshift lab in the apartment’s utility room.

Chief Deputy Dennis Cavanaugh said this is Lorain County’s first DMT lab and talks with others in law enforcement have led him to believe it could be the first in the state.

“Unfortunately, there are a lot of drug processes you can find on the Internet and people who are not well-versed in chemistry will try these processes out in ways that are a danger to neighbors and the community,” he said. “There is so much out there that you never know who is going to be doing what. That’s the scary part.”

In a county known to be a hotbed for heroin and prescription drug use, finding a DMT lab is a surprise. When two officers from the Lorain County Drug Task Force went to Rush’s Washington Avenue apartment March 5, they were not even looking for the lab.

Narcotics Detective Olen Martin said they wanted to talk to a resident about another investigation and were invited into the apartment, which smelled strongly of marijuana.

“We let that go for a while so we can talk to him about this other case, but when we were done we told him we saw the marijuana and couldn’t let that slide,” Martin said. “He voluntarily gave up a couple of ounces of marijuana and some paraphernalia.”

But it was the subsequent walkthrough of the apartment that let detectives know they had more than a little marijuana on their hands.

Martin said he passed a utility room and through a door that was ajar spotted jars of brownish liquid, cooking pots and plastic tubing.

“I thought we had a red phosphorous meth lab, but it was something else,” Martin said. “Up until a year ago, I didn’t know what DMT was, but I took a drug class and it was one of the things we were taught to be on the lookout for.”

Officers confiscated 60 milliliters of liquid drug and 50 grams of DMT in its finished state — a powdery, crystallized solid with a street value of nearly $7,000. DMT is a Schedule 1 hallucinogenic drug that can be smoked or snorted alone, but Martin said the preferred method is to sprinkle it on marijuana just before it’s smoked.

“It’s kind of a cross between PCP and LSD,” he said. “It’s supposed to have properties of both and give off this very intense high,” he said. “The high can last five to 30 minutes and the high is described as an awake dream state.”

Making DMT is a lot like making meth, but the starting product is the bark of a rare tree.

It is then boiled so the DMT properties are extracted and mixed with liquid drain cleaner and paint thinner. When mixed together, the chemicals can be volatile and explosive.

Once the lab was discovered, Martin said the entire building was evacuated and Elyria police were called to assist. A hazardous materials crew licensed through the Drug Enforcement Agency was called in to handle cleanup.

The drugs, chemicals and paraphernalia were confiscated, but no charges were filed against Rush, McFadian or Harvitt until the felony indictment was handed down March 21.

Elyria Police Chief Duane Whitely said he can only imagine what would have happened if not for Martin knowing what to look for inside the apartment.

“If he didn’t observe something that didn’t feel right and follow up with the right questions — what’s going on here and what are you doing — this could have gone on for a long time with them cooking and selling this drug in the community,” he said. “We had 65 drug overdoses in Lorain County last year and knew some of them were from this drug, but it lets us all know we have enough on our hands and we don’t need a new one in town.”

“We had 65 drug overdoses in Lorain County last year and knew some of them were from this drug, but it lets us all know we have enough on our hands and we don’t need a new one in town.”

Keep in mind that 'some' may very well mean 'one', and 'knew' may very well mean 'suspected'.