Cops who received a call about a suspicious person at a Taco Bell in Iowa found two men who had been cooking a lot more than tacos. Two men, one of them a Taco Bell employee, were arrested after police found the remnants of a meth lab inside a utility area in the Cedar Rapids restaurant, the Gazette reports. Officers say the restaurant was closed when they arrived a little before 5am yesterday, but they found the men outside and called the manager to check out the interior. Kent Duby, 56, and Christopher Matous, 31, face charges including conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine.
The restaurant was closed all day yesterday and Taco Bell says it won't reopen until it has been sanitized and inspected by health authorities. "Both we and our franchisee find this completely unacceptable," the company said in a statement, describing the find as an isolated incident and stressing that "the suspicious items found in the restaurant were not used in the kitchen," KWWL reports. The company also says the employee involved has been fired. (A Taco Bell in Chicago is the only one in the country serving alcohol.)