Deputies bust two people cooking meth at St. Augustine inn

Officials busted a suspected meth lab near the St. Augustine Outlets Saturday.

Deputies said people were cooking meth in a room at the Scottish Inns.

St. Johns County investigators pieced through evidence for hours.

Customers at the neighboring hotel said they knew something was wrong when they walked along a fence and smelled a nasty odor.

They said deputies started knocking on their doors and told them to get out immediately.

“If it would have blown up,  we would have been dead," said one of the people that was evacuated.

Guests said they were in shock.

Deputies, DEA agents, crime scene investigators and hazmat technicians swarmed the Scottish Inn and found the possible meth lab in Room 118.

“A cop was like, 'hey guys you need to move because the chemicals are blowing.' I was like, 'what chemicals?' And they were like, 'chemicals from a meth lab,'” said one customer.

Kasey DeSanto is staying next door at a different hotel. She watched the entire investigation unfold.

“They came out with paint bucket after paint bucket and you could see like pipes sticking out and from one angle in the room you could see some of the equipment they had in there,” said DeSanto.

She said the hazmat technicians deconstructed the display of chemicals placed on laundry baskets.

They then pulled apart tubes and removed hot plates from the room.

"Two people were pulled out who were making the meth and they were odd. They were all disoriented,“ said a Scottish Inn customer.

Customers said a man and woman wearing blue gowns were brought out of their hotel in zip ties. Animal Control was brought in to assist with their dogs.

“They had two pit bull puppies that they had to wash them off and the hazmat team had to wash them off,” said the customer.

People at the scene said the odor coming from the building was intolerable.

“It was like heavy Lysol mixed with this nastiness of chemicals in it,” said a customer.

Cox Media Group