By Hank Dudding
The Commercial Appeal
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A traffic stop on an ambulance led to the arrest Sunday of a man wanted for making methamphetamine, according to police.
Paul Winters, 29, faces nine counts of promotion of methamphetamine manufacture and one count of initiating the process to make meth.
According to police, a woman discovered “thick, acrid smoke” in her house in the 1600 block of Cleoford in Frayser when she got home around 6 p.m. Sunday.
Winters, a friend of her boyfriend’s, was hunched over a bottle cooking meth, she said.
He left on foot after she told him she was calling the police.
After officers arrived and began an investigation, the woman alerted them that Winters was a passenger aboard a passing ASI ambulance. ASI is a private ambulance company.
His girlfriend, an ASI employee, was at the wheel. She denied knowing anything about the meth-making and wasn’t charged.
ASI director Larry Hopper said the driver was “at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“This guy had called her and said, ‘Come by and see me.’ So when she pulled up, that’s when she got involved,” said Hopper, who also said the woman shouldn’t have been driving the ambulance and will be disciplined.
Police found a host of materials used to make meth at the house.
Winters, who was found to have bought pseudoephedrine at least nine times between Sept. 25 and Nov. 10, was being held in the Shelby County Jail on $75,000 bond.
Copyright 2009 The Commercial Appeal, Inc.