Firefighters arrive about 3:30 p.m. today to help police break into safes inside the muffler shop on South Gold Street in Centralia following the morning raid.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CENTRALIA – The owner of a Centralia muffler shop was arrested today following an investigation into trafficking of narcotics and stolen property.
The Centralia police SWAT team executed a search warrant at 10 o’clock this morning at the Muffler Hut on the 1400 block of South Gold Street.
Frank Eugene Willis, 65, described as the longtime owner, was booked into the Lewis County Jail.
Detectives and other officers have searched the premises and recovered numerous items of contraband and stolen property, according to a news release from the Centralia Police Department. Officers also seized numerous firearms, police reported.
Police detective Sgt. Pat Fitzgerald said the stolen goods they found are the “typical stuff you find in Lewis County, in a rural county.” He named items such as chain saws table saws, power tools, and the kind of equipment used for construction and logging.
Willis, who lives in an apartment on the premises, was arrested for possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver. The sergeant said he couldn’t really say much about the amount of methamphetamine found until it was weighed. He later said it was about one ounce.
Members of Riverside Fire Authority arrived about 3:30 p.m. to help police get into some safes. Fitzgerald said he believed one or more guns were found inside them.
About 40 firearms were seized, mostly a collection of old rifles, some shotguns and one very old black powder Revolutionary War-era replica, he said. Some handguns were found and one firearm was confirmed to have been stolen out of Pacific County, Fitzgerald said.
A utility trailer and an ATV stolen from Chehalis were among the property found, according to the Chehalis Police Department.
Today’s arrest was the culmination of an investigation by the Centralia Police Department Anti-Crime Team.
Also arrested was an employee on an unrelated outstanding warrant, according to police.
Yellow police tape blocked the entrance to the fenced shop yard this afternoon as log truck driver Ken Sellers Jr. showed up to see what was going on. His wife is a longtime friend of Willis and called him to say she’d heard news about the raid, he said.
“I was gonna bring my daughter’s car here so he could fix her muffler, but then we hear this,” Sellers said.
Fitzgerald said police finished up about 5:30 p.m. and he didn’t know of any reason the shop couldn’t be open tomorrow.
Neither Willis’s wife, who owns the business with him, nor his son (or step-son, he wasn’t sure) who were there this morning were arrested, Fitzgerald said. The sergeant said he believed they only had the one employee.
A customer was just leaving as the SWAT team arrived this morning and a pair of women who live in a mobile home in the compound were there as well when police arrived, he said.
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This news story was updated at 7:35 p.m. and again at 10:15 a.m. on Friday Aug. 20, 2010.