The criminal investigation into a pair of unusual mercury spills in Houston turned toward a run-down lab on Brittmoore Street, where Houston police officers — some garbed in white hazmat suits — searched the facility for roughly eight hours Friday, collecting chemical samples, equipment and other records.

The site, GeoChem Laboratories, is where authorities say a 19-year-old last week allegedly kicked in the front door and stole 11 pounds of liquid mercury, which he then spilled in two different areas — episodes that health officials said posed little public risk but nonetheless elicited dramatic emergency responses.

While police haven’t publicly said what Friday’s search turned up, a warrant exclusively obtained by the Chronicle shows that investigators believe the company was illegally storing “tubs” of mercury and other potentially hazardous chemicals, based on their prior interactions with the building and other evidence.

A Houston police detective “observed a collapsed roof and various bottles of hazardous chemicals such as acids, and containers of mercury inside the building,” the affidavit accompanying the warrant says. Another official found “multiple containers of mercury and a mercury spill.”

“Additional labels attached to various barrels of product stored at the business also indicate other chemicals or wastes are being stored there,” the document says.

Those chemicals were stored — years after the business had closed — in a building that the detective described as “in total despair and abandoned.”

On HoustonChronicle.com: GeoChem almost certainly broke laws for storing mercury, experts say

In a statement, an attorney for company owner Geoffrey Bayliss and his family cast the burglary as an “unfortunate incident” and thanked police for responding. He denied the facility was abandoned or neglected, saying the family routinely checked on it.

“There were some statements in the media that the chemicals on site were abandoned. That is not accurate,” attorney Joe Bailey wrote. “Prior to the break in and removal of the mercury, all the chemicals were properly segregated, marked, stored and secured in industrial cabinets inside the building. The building was locked and secured to prevent unauthorized access.”

Legal experts have said the law doesn’t permit a business to continue storing hazardous chemicals in a facility long after it has closed. Police said they did not believe the company had the required state permits to store such substances.

Within the affidavit, police said Paul and Michael Bayliss — Geoffrey’s sons — told detectives they did not know what was inside the facility, but their father “did not want to get rid of it.” They said they recently started a clean-up effort but did not know how to proceed.

The lawyer’s description of the facility was also contradicted by the sworn affidavit from police. When asked about those discrepancies, Michael Bailey, a clerk for the law firm Hinton & Bailey, attributed the damage to looters.

“Despite the company’s best efforts, burglars, thieves and vandals have looted the lab, creating the damage and destruction which has been described by officials,” Bailey said. “The contents inside the lab were properly and cautiously stored and the lab itself was organized in a meticulous fashion.”

On HoustonChronicle.com: How to protect your family from a mercury spill

The company, which one of the brothers described as a “provider of services and scientific analysis to the oil industry,” lost its tax license in 2012, and the family told police it has been closed for some time.

It still, however, owns the rock and metal building tucked at the end of a narrow private road, according to property tax records.

Those records describe the building’s physical condition and functional utility as “poor.” They say the building has no cooling, heating or sprinkler systems.

The search was the latest development in a peculiar series of events regarding two spills. Mercury is a heavy, silver metal that occurs in liquid form at normal temperatures and can be dangerous when ingested or inhaled.

Christopher Melder, 19, is being held on $150,000 bond on charges of burglary and unlawful disposal of hazardous waste in connection with the spills, along with an outstanding drug charge. He is accused of spilling the substance at a hospital near The Woodlands, where he sought treatment for a lacerated finger, and at a string of businesses in west Houston, where he tried to hawk smaller samples of the mercury for $20 apiece.

The FBI said earlier this week that Melder didn’t appear to have nefarious intent. He “just decided to steal this mercury and thought it would be fun to play with,” said agency spokeswoman Christina Garza, who did not respond to a request for an update Friday.

The search warrant affidavit also sheds new details on Melder’s actions during those three days, including that he confessed the burglary to a firefighter and hospital staff when he first went to the CHI St. Luke’s Health-Springwood Village emergency room early Saturday morning.

He was later allowed to leave after Harris County sheriff’s deputies said they didn’t have probable cause to charge him with a crime.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Here’s how the west Houston mercury spill unfolded

Melder went to the emergency room with a finger laceration around 2 a.m. Saturday, where hospital officials have said he spilled about five ounces of the liquid from his backpack and pocket. The spill forced the hospital to briefly shut down its emergency department, transfer patients to another branch as a precaution, and call the Harris County hazardous materials team.

The teen told a Spring firefighter that he and a friend stole the mercury from the building, and he said there was more still inside, the affidavit says. Prosecutors said earlier this week that FBI agents haven’t been able to verify Melder’s claim of an accomplice.

“Mr. Melder stated that he and his friend found a large tank of mercury in the building and proceeded to dip their hands in the product in addition to taking small vial-sized containers of the mercury and a medium-sized glass container that he put in a black and silver lock box he had in his backpack,” the warrant says.

Investigators at the hospital searched Melder’s backpack, where they found an airsoft rifle, small zipper-type bags containing a scale, earbuds and chargers. Another bag had tattoo equipment as well, and both contained spilled mercury.

Early Sunday afternoon, an anonymous tipster who works in the chemical industry reported a silvery substance on the parking lot near Walmart on Westview Drive, a few blocks from the lab. The ensuing response included at least four fire department engines, about 30 police officers, and a decontamination protocol. Dozens of people went through that protocol, and one woman was hospitalized.

Mercury would later be found in the Walmart, a Shell gas station, a Sonic Drive-In and Bucky’s (not Buc’ees) convenience store. Prosecutors said Melder sold samples of the metal to two people there.

Those stores have remained closed all week amid decontamination efforts, though health officials gave Walmart permission to reopen Thursday evening.

After the response Sunday, a Houston police detective and Harris County hazmat official went to examine the building, according to the affidavit. That’s when they found the containers of mercury and other potentially harmful chemicals.

When the hazmat official found another spill upstairs in the facility, he left and told the detective to do the same.

Investigators with the Houston Police Department’s major offenders division cordoned off the lab about 8 a.m. Friday. They set up a blue trailer that served as a remote lab, where chemical samples could be tested.

Officials wearing jackets with the logo of NRC — an environmental services provider (not the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) — carried large blue bins toward the facility. Another wore a hat branded with TCEQ — for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

That agency has previously said GeoChem did not provide it “with notification of waste generation as required by rule.” A spokesman did not respond to a request for an update Friday.

Search teams left before 4 p.m. Friday. It wasn’t clear whether they would return again later that night or on the weekend. However, a Houston police cruiser has guarded the building since Sunday and one remained there Friday evening after the search teams had left.

dylan.mcguinness@chron.com