A man stopped by patrol officers for littering Wednesday ended up being arrested on drug charges when police found remains of a methamphetamine lab in a bag the man threw from his car, authorities said.

Mark William Luce, 31, 902 Glendale Ave., Muscle Shoals, is charged with attempting to commit a controlled substance crime, Sheffield Police Chief Greg Ray said.

Luce was arrested when police investigator Capt. Randy Butler saw him throw a package out his car window on Eighth Street.

"I thought he was just throwing trash out of his car," Butler said. "When I stopped him, I found out he had outstanding misdemeanor warrants from Muscle Shoals (police)."

Then Butler retrieved the bag Luce reportedly tossed from the car and found traces of ingredients used in a meth lab.

"What (Luce) did was dumb and had the potential to be a dangerous situation," Ray said. "Anyone could have walked by, reached down and picked up that bag and could have been harmed. It takes trained people to clean up meth labs and properly dispose of the remains, because they can be so dangerous and volatile."

Authorities said investigators later discovered the Colbert County Drug Task Force has been investigating Luce on accusations of illegal drug activity.

Reports indicate task force members searched Luce's residence and found materials used in the manufacturing process of meth as well as a small amount of methamphetamine.

Butler said Luce could face additional charges related to the search.

"The moral to this story is don't ride around when you have outstanding warrants and throw a meth lab out the car window," Ray said. "If not for the outstanding warrants, Capt. Butler would have written him a littering citation and made him pick up the bag.

"After (Butler) learned about the outstanding warrants and found the meth remnants, Luce went from being a litter bug to a jail bird." Luce was being held in jail Thursday without bail.

Tom Smith can be reached at 256-740-5757 or tom.smith@TimesDaily.com.