Oh, boy. This one ain’t good.
Two chemistry professors who had been teaching at a university in Arkansas were arrested on Friday afternoon after a police investigation determined they’d allegedly been manufacturing methamphetamine and using drug paraphernalia in a science lab on university grounds! Truly, Breaking Bad come to real life!
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The professors, Bradley Allen Rowland, 40, and Terry Bateman, 45, were both taken into police custody on Friday afternoon after a weeks-long investigation by the Clark County Sheriff’s Department regarding some bizarre and suspicious occurrences at their school — Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. Both men are associate professors of chemistry at that university.
According to the police, they were officially charged with manufacturing methamphetamine and using drug paraphernalia. More charges may be forthcoming over the next few days, too, as cops further investigate allegations against the pair and consider whether to add more offenses on top of what they’re already facing.
This whole thing started way back on October 8, when the university’s science center was closed after a bizarre chemical odor was reported by someone on the grounds. An environmental service team completed remediation work on the property, and after three weeks of ventilating it via open windows and new air filtration systems, the building was finally reopened on October 29.
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It was during the three-week period across October when the building was closed down that investigators discovered traces of benzyl chloride, a chemical that can be used to synthesize methamphetamine, in one of the lab tests. And while university spokespeople won’t officially confirm that Rowland and Bateman were the ones suspected of using school property to make meth, they were both placed on administrative leave way back on October 11, well before their arrests on Friday.
“Henderson’s Heisenberg”
In the ultimate irony of ironies, KATV reports that Rowland was once referred to by the university’s newspaper as “Henderson’s Heisenberg” after the famous Walter White character alias in Breaking Bad as part of a story the outlet ran on chemistry at the university. In the 2014 piece, Rowland was interviewed by the paper and spoke proudly, both of chemistry and the longtime popular AMC show, saying (below):
“I thought it was a great show. It was spot on and accurate when it came to the science, and, it has gotten a younger, newer generation interested in chemistry. I feel like it was a wonderful recruiting tool.”
And now, well, here he is making headlines all over again… yikes!!!
What do U think about this absurd twist of events for these two seemingly-normal University professors, Perezcious readers?! Sometimes art imitates life… and sometimes, well, life imitates art! Sound OFF with all of your opinions about this craziness in the comments (below)…
[Image via Avalon/WENN]
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