By Molly AK Connors
Concord Monitor
FRANKLIN, N.H. — A Franklin man has been sentenced to more than five years in prison for his involvement with a methamphetamine laboratory that exploded during a police raid and sent Franklin High School into an extended lockdown.
Jeremy Clough, 33, of Franklin was sentenced to 63 months in prison and three years of supervised release on charges of conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine, U.S. Attorney John Kacavas said in a press release.
In April 2010, Clough was cooking a batch of the volatile drug in his second-floor apartment at 160 Central St. when 20 officers, including federal agents, broke the door down to arrest him and his then-girlfriend, Rebecca Field.
Within a minute, the apartment was on fire. It eventually became a three-alarm fire that required about 75 firefighters and hazardous materials experts from 11 surrounding communities.
Clough will have to pay restitution to the owners of the destroyed apartment building and its roughly half dozen displaced tenants, as well as to the Franklin Fire Department and the New Hampshire Hazardous Materials Response Team.
The amount could exceed $500,000, Kacavas said in the press release. Clough, who told his landlord that he was using the space for storage, also used an unoccupied apartment on the first floor of his building to cook the drugs.
The April 6 raid occurred about 10 a.m., in part because Field’s children would be out of the house, officials said at the time. But it also meant Franklin High School, less than 1,000 feet down the road, was full of students who were forced to huddle in darkened classrooms for several hours and rely on their cell phones to inform them of the day’s raids.
Eight students, one teacher and several officers required medical attention for smoke-related issues.
Copyright 2011 Concord Monitor/Sunday Monitor