Meth dealer arrested twice in 1 month

A Bloomington auto detailer was arrested Monday night for manufacturing methamphetamines. He had also been arrested two weeks prior for the same offense and was out on bond.

Roger Lee Merriman, 48, had been manufacturing meth in an auto repair garage on the 2100 block of W. Industrial Park Drive.

The detectives said that when they approached the inside, Merriman was stripping off the cases of batteries, and there was a 2-liter bottle of a bubbling substance next to him.

They also found “a bottle of drain cleaner, Coleman fuel, packs of cold medicine, stripped batteries and pseudoephedrin pills that had been crushed into powder,” Lt. David Drake of the Bloomington Police Department said while reading off the police report.

A meth suppression team came and took possession of pieces of the lab.

Merriman “admitted that he was assisting and helping someone else,” Drake said, reading off the police report. He was transported to jail for manufacturing meth, a Class B felony.

Only two weeks earlier, on July 2, he was arrested for dealing meth. He bonded out of Monroe County Jail on July 8.

– Alex Rast