Man believed to be cooking marijuana burns arm in explosion
A man burned his arm in an explosion Tuesday investigators think ignited while he was cooking marijuana, the Las Vegas Fire Department said.
Firefighters said the man’s father was showing him how to produce “weed butter” prior to the explosion about 8:50 p.m. inside the central-valley apartment at 2121 N. Jones Blvd., near Lake Mead Boulevard, spokesman Tim Szymanski said.
Szymanski said the man was trying to heat a marijuana plant to extract concentrated THC, which can be cooked with butter to use in foods. Fire investigators think the man used butane to accelerate the process, which Szymanski said can ignite without the proper precautions.
“The explosion was similar to a match being thrown into a propane grill that didn’t ignite the first couple of tries,” Szymanski said in a statement.
Firefighters saw lingering smoke and evidence that the fire burned on the stovetop and damaged a microwave above the stove.
Las Vegas Fire Department tracked burn spots to the parking lot and found a device they initially thought was a pipe bomb.
The man, whose name was not released, is hospitalized at University Medical Center with burns to about 18 percent of his body, mostly an arm, Szymanski said.
Metropolitan Police Department narcotics detectives are investigating, Szymanski said.
Contact Mike Shoro at mshoro@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @mike_shoro on Twitter.