New details emerge about Salinas meth house

KION is learning more about a North Salinas meth house that’s connected to a murder investigation and officer-involved shooting.

Neighbors told KION that for years, they reported their concerns about trash in the front yard of 1529 North 1st Street. The home is owned by murder suspect Jeffrey Madruga, who is also accused of running a meth lab inside the home.

KION obtained records from the Monterey County Health Department’s Environmental Health Bureau dating back to 2011. In December 2015, one of the reports said it was the fifth complaint on that property that year. Other complaints talk about suspicious liquids. There’s documentation from county workers who said they couldn’t approach the front gate because of vicious dogs in the front yard.

It wasn’t just on the county’s radar, but also the Salinas Code Enforcement. While it’s unclear how long Madruga owned the home, complaints of broken down cars in the driveway started in 1999. Other complaints included trash and blight in the front yard.

Code enforcement said they can only address what they get reports of, and by all accounts believed it was a classic case of hoarding. There were two reports of trash at the home this year. Previous inspections were only done outside of the home, but in 2014, officers had a reason to go into the house – illegal construction in the garage.

“When we did the inspection, there was nothing that jumped out as criminal activity or caused us to believe that anything else was going on, aside from the hoarding and unsanitary conditions,” said Lorenzo Sanchez, Salinas senior code enforcement officer. “Nothing in the garage that jumped out at us that signified that there was anything else going on, such as criminal activity or anyone living in there.”

Despite the raid, code enforcement officers are continuing to clean up the blight, now working with Madruga’s father.

“Seems like a day late, a dollar short,” said Ronald Thomas, a concerned neighbor. “I mean, when we needed them, they weren’t there and the complaints piled up going back over 10 years. Neighbors are talking about complaints from 2005, 2007.”

Thomas said his pleas for help to the city and the county went unanswered. He reached out to the media and the city council.

“We reached out to our city council person and she was very receptive, Kimbley Craig,” Thomas said. “We’re going to set up a community meeting and we just want to make sure this never happens again.”

But he’s also asking for accountability from the city, in what he calls a failure to protect.