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A trustee stopping to deliver towels at a rural North Dakota church last week wondered why the church doors were locked. Later that evening, congregants expecting a service instead found sheriff's deputies officials with guns drawn.
"Who would have thought somebody would turn an active church into an active amphetamine lab?" Rick Majerus, a Cass County, N.D., sheriff's lieutenant, said Monday.
"There have been active methamphetamine labs in the back seats of cars, bathtubs and abandoned barns, but nobody I've talked to has ever heard of a meth lab in a church," Majerus said.
But, authorities said, that is what happened at the Bethel Moravian Church near Leonard, N.D., about 40 miles southwest of Fargo.
Ted Brewer, 22, of Leonard, has been charged with attempting to manufacture a controlled substance, burglary and two counts of possessing drug paraphernalia -- all felonies.
The church trustee arrived around 6 p.m. Wednesday and began to rattle the locked doors. Through a crack, he saw a man inside the church suddenly scamper, Majerus said. When the intruder ran from the church, the congregant called authorities, who caught Brewer on foot.
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