Eyewitness News was first on the scene as investigators seized 17 pounds of fentanyl materials, 2.2 pounds of counterfeit Xanax pills with suspected fentanyl, a pound of counterfeit Adderall pills, four and a half pounds of cocaine, 44 pounds of marijuana, three pistols, a rifle, and a stolen car.
"The problem with that is that those pills can be made so well that the average user would have no idea what they got from a regular pharmacy and what was actually made at a place like this," Lt. Craig Cummings, with DPS's SE Region, said. "These pills, once they leave a facility like this, can find themselves in the hands of a friend who thinks they have a legitimate pill and then hands that off to somebody else," Cummings said.But that high potency means it's deadly, even in tiny amounts. And most people who die from it didn't even know they were taking it.
According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, 97% of accidental opioid deaths in the state last year involved fentanyl."They make them in a blender or a cement mixer, so there is no real dosing of the fentanyl that goes into a particular pill," Cummings said. "If you were to drop your saltshaker on the table, the amount of salt that comes out of that is probably a deadly fentanyl dose if you were to compare the two.
More charges are likely coming as investigators look into what they believe could be a complex, far-reaching drug-making operation."It's crazy. That's stuff you see on the news. It could be right next to you, right next to you, and you'd never know," Salgado said.