Potentially suspicious items
Bags, blocks, and a concerning police response
Potentially suspicious items
Many bags of rubbish would be left behind the rear door of Sophia Nails, often there would be in the region of eight to ten bin bags.
If I was at the property, I used to collect any bags that were in the alleyway and take them to the tip.
On one occasion, a significant amount of rubbish had been left in bin bags behind the shop.
I picked it all up and drove it to the tip.
When I was throwing the bags into a skip, one bag split open and something hit my leg.
I looked down and saw the bag in the picture.
I looked at the floor and saw five of those bags and five blocks.
I looked at the bags and thought they were suspect.
I remember thinking: why would someone wrap something up so well just to throw it away?
As it was a liquid, why didn't they simply flush it down a drain?
I noticed the following photo in a news article.
The blocks seemed to be made of a crushed organic material; I could see seeds in the material.
I thought that these items could be from the manufacture of illicit drugs, so I showed them to the police.
When I returned to the house, a Vietnamese man was waiting for me, and he was extremely angry.
He demanded to know what I had done with his rubbish, so I told him that I had taken it to the tip.
At that point he looked like he was going to explode; he told me that I was not to take his rubbish ever again.
I took the items to Barry police station.
We offered the items to the two police officers who spoke to us outside the police station.
We told the officers of our suspicions.
The officer who spoke to me said that he thought the blocks were probably some sort of soap and advised me to throw them away.
He said that the bags were probably something that the nail salon had bought but not used.
When I returned home, I put some water on one of the blocks to see if it would lather; it didn't.
I decided to cut into one of the blocks.
As soon as I made the cut, I could feel the effects: my nose started running, my eyes were watering, and I felt confused and dizzy.
Whatever was inside seemed to be glowing and pulsating.
I left the block outside overnight and had another look at it the following morning; it still seemed to be pulsating.
It had a thick outer green skin which seemed to have been made from well‑compressed organic matter.
In the police report, the two officers do not mention the items.
I contacted various forensic testing companies hoping to be able to have the material in the bags tested, but the companies were not willing to deal with me as a private individual.
Three companies I contacted were:
- Socotec Forensic testing services
- Bericon Forensics
- Key Forensic services
I made several other observations about the nail bar's rubbish. The first was that they seemed to generate a substantial amount of rubbish for a nail salon.
Although the shop was closed, and there was nobody living at the property, rubbish was still being put out during the Covid pandemic.
Large pink bags (large bin‑bag size) were often left outside on top of the rubbish.
Out of curiosity, I opened one of those bags. The first thing I noticed was a strong smell of solvents.
The bag was full of industrial‑sized wet wipes, all soaked in solvent. They were all perfectly clean and folded, with no signs of nail polish or anything else.