OLD TOWN, Maine — Three people were arrested Wednesday on charges of trafficking in methamphetamine after Maine Drug Enforcement Agency agents and Old Town police discovered a meth lab in an apartment house on French Island.
Tina Clavette, 42, who lives at the house, Joshua Doucette, 35, of Milford and area transient Aaron Coker, 27, were all charged with felony drug trafficking, Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland said Thursday.
“Old Town police received a tip Tuesday night that the manufacturing of methamphetamine was taking place inside apartment [No.] 2 at 3 Howard St. on French Island,” McCausland said. “The apartment was secured during the night [by Old Town police] awaiting the MDEA meth lab response team, which arrived Wednesday to process the scene.”
A teenager who was in the apartment was not involved in the alleged meth making, McCausland said.
Old Town Fire Department and Maine Department of Environmental Protection personnel also assisted at the scene on Wednesday.
Last year, MDEA responded to a record number of 37 meth labs, McCausland said.
“The Old Town incident is only four shy of that number,” he said. “This is the 33rd meth lab response they have made this year.”
The three were taken to the Penobscot County Jail in Bangor and are scheduled to make their first court appearances on Friday, a jail official said.
Methamphetamine, an illegal stimulant that has plagued western parts of the U.S. for more than two decades, has crept into Maine over the last five years, according to Peter Arno, commander of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency division II, which covers the northern half of the state.