Peru man found guilty in meth case

By SHERRY LOSHNOWSKY
Tribune News Editor
Thursday, January 19, 2006

A jury found a Peru man guilty of manufacturing and possession of methamphetamine after a trial held in Miami Circuit Court Tuesday and Wednesday.

Robert J. Nickels, 34, of 60 E. Jefferson Ave., will be sentenced on Feb. 16 and faces anywhere from 6 to 20 years in prison. He was arrested on the evening of March 16, 2005, when Peru Police Department officers came to the residence on Jefferson Avenue to serve an arrest warrant on Nickels for violating probation for auto theft. They found Nickels in a fenced-in area attached to a garage cooking methamphetamine, explained Prosecutor Eric Huneryager.

Huneryager said when officers approached Nickels and asked him what he was doing, Nickels responded, "You know what I'm doing. I waited for my father to go to bed to do it."

Officers then obtained a warrant to search the home and in it found a box under Nickels' bed with meth pipes, a torch, baggies, a digital scale and a bag of meth in a tin box. There was also a closed-circuit television set with a camera hooked up to it surveying the cooking meth outside.

Manufacturing methamphetamine is a Class B felony and possession of methamphetamine is a Class D felony.

Nickels has other outstanding charges against him, including battery with serious bodily injury and other drug related charges stemming from unrelated incidents.

Print this story   |   Email this story