Founder and Managing Partner
BRENTWOOD — A local couple made headlines late last month when police allegedly found a drug lab operating inside their suburban home, but it was a liquor store burglary investigation that first brought the cops to their doorstep.
Danielle Kumerow, 42, and Maxwell Hayworth, 44, were suspected of entering Hops and Scotch, a Walnut Creek-based liquor store, and making off with $50,000 to $60,000 worth of bottles of alcohol. The break-in occurred on March 23, about 10 minutes after midnight, and video shows a man and woman loading bottles into a rented Nissan Frontier after cutting a hole into the wall, authorities said.
The pair became suspects when a rental car used in the break-in was linked back to Kumerow, court records show. But when police showed up to their home on Shasta Daisy Lane in Brentwood, they were surprised to discover lab equipment associated with the pyschedellic drug DMT, authorities said.
DMT, short for Dimethyltryptamine, produces hallucinations and euphoria, is derived from a bark and commonly ingested through vaporizer pens sold on the black market. Police say they called the bomb squad to the Brentwood home after an explosive compound was discovered in the lab.
Both Kumerow and Hayworth are facing charges of burglary, grand theft, manufacturing and possessing a controlled substance and child endangerment, court records show. Hayworth remains jailed with bail set at $380,000, but Kumerow posted $250,000 bail and is a free woman while the case is pending.
They are next due in court on May 13.
(source)