Three Sneads, Florida residents are in jail after a methamphetamine-induced group hallucination led them to call police claiming that they were being held hostage, the Dothan Eagle reports.
On Sunday, a carrier with the United States Postal Service approached the house in which Matthew Tyler McDaniel, Damian Joseph Hines, and Madison Star Douglas were residing. She told police that the trio was yelling for help from the second story, and banging on the windows and walls.
They told her that they had been held hostage for several hours, and that one of them had been shot, another stabbed. The postal employee called 911, and police and emergency medical personnel were dispatched to the scene.
When police arrived, the trio told them that the intruders holding them hostage were holed up in the building's ground floor, where they had retreated after one of three residents ripped a toilet from the wall and threw it out the window at their captors.
After assessing the situation, authorities determined that ground floor was unoccupied -- and that McDaniel, Hines, and Douglas had hallucinated the home invasion and had injured themselves while fending off intruders who didn't exist.
What did exist, police say, was a methamphetamine laboratory, as well as evidence that the trio had consumed some of the product they were manufacturing.
"It appears that in their altered mental state, the subjects were hallucinating and believed that they were being attacked," Jackson County Sheriff Lou Roberts told WTVY.
A Jackson County Sheriff spokesman concurred, telling the Dothan Eagle that "the three armed themselves with a 12-gauge shotgun and a .22 rifle. Approximately 40 rounds of 12-gauge and an unknown number of .22 rounds were fired from inside the residence. Numerous windows were shot out and holes were shot in the walls. They completely removed a large rear window from the house on the second floor and threw the bathroom sink at the imaginary attackers. Chunks of sheetrock, wood, firearm parts and anything they could tear out of the residence was thrown outside, including the toilet, which was ripped from the floor."
All three were charged with possession of methamphetamines, attempting to manufacture methamphetamine, felony criminal mischief and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Watch a report on the incident via WTVY below.
["Young handsome man sitting in toilet. drug addict alarmed and listening attentively" on Shutterstock]
