Authorities have raided an alleged biolab discovered in a Las Vegas home. The raid, conducted over the weekend, led to police finding refrigerators with “vials containing unknown liquids,” 8 News Now reports.
Sheriff Kevin McMahill said during a news conference that the discovery poses no threat to the public. “This has to be a slow and methodical process by design,” he said. “We have to take these situations very seriously, and we take all necessary precautions to keep our personnel and community safe.”
An LLC connected to the home matches records of a company involved in a case in California surrounding a separate biolab, according to The Hill.
Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) noted the investigations are linked. “An illegal bio lab was just raided in Vegas,” he wrote on social media. “It appears to be linked to the secret Chinese lab found in California in 2023, which was oozing with E. Coli, HIV, and Malaria. Congress must pass my bill to find these illegal labs and shut them all down.”
In 2023, a congressional report alleged that the man behind the biological laboratory found in California is connected to the CCP. The biolab contained an estimated 20 infectious disease samples, including Ebola.
Authorities discovered the lab was organized by Jia Bei Zhu, a Chinese citizen who had “previously stolen millions of dollars of intellectual property from American companies and was part of an ongoing transnational criminal enterprise with ties to the PRC for which he was ultimately charged in federal court,” according to the report.
The report concluded by stating: “At a minimum, the Reedley Biolab shows the profound threat that unlicensed and unknown biolabs pose to our country. At worst, this investigation revealed significant gaps in our nation’s defenses and pathogen-related regulations that present a grave national security risk that could be exploited in the future.”
