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CA: Largest Marijuana Bust In Tulare County

7/01/08/The Fresno Bee/ Tim Sheehan

78,524 pot plants destroyed; crop would have yielded more than $314 million in sales.

State and federal agents joined Tulare County detectives Monday to destroy more than 78,000 marijuana plants in a record haul for the county and, perhaps, for the Valley.

Four people were arrested in connection with the illegal pot plantation tucked into federal Bureau of Land Management property in the foothills east of Exeter.

"This is the largest single eradication and seizure operation in Tulare County history," said Lt. Mike Boudreaux, who heads the Tulare County Sheriff's Tactical Enforcement Patrol, or STEP.

"This particular garden is extremely large, one of the largest I've ever seen."

A monthlong investigation pointed agents to the site about 41/2 miles east of a home at 35340 Yokohl Valley Drive, where agents tore out 78,524 individual marijuana plants.

"I'd have to say this covered about 15 acres," Boudreaux said.

"The plants were about 4 or 5 feet apart, in rows that went across an entire mountainside."

Agents say each plant represents a pound of pot with a street value of about $4,000. The entire garden would have yielded more than $314 million had it grown to maturity and harvest.

Kyle Littlejohn, 37, who lives at the Yokohl Valley Drive address, was arrested on suspicion of cultivating marijuana and conspiracy to cultivate.

Police said Littlejohn also had a stolen quad cycle valued at $8,000.

Three Lindsay residents were also arrested at their home on the 800 block of Foothill Avenue.

They are Antonio Gonzalez, 29, booked on suspicion of cultivation of marijuana, conspiracy to cultivate and being under the influence of a controlled substance; Gumercindo Jimenez, 68, booked on suspicion of cultivation of marijuana; and Dimas Jimenez, 34, booked on suspicion of possessing a controlled substance and being under the influence of drugs.

Detectives are continuing their investigation.

"This case isn't over," Boudreaux said.

"A grow site of this magnitude is typically tied to a highly organized drug-trafficking group."

Agents said the suspects may have sparked a foothill wildfire that burned about 30 acres in the area within the past couple of weeks.

But the fire may be the least of the problems for the remote site.

"There's a lot of damage to the mountainside and the landscape, in addition to the overall size of this thing," Boudreaux said.

Terraces were carved into the hillside for the garden and for water storage, and natural streams were diverted to water and fertilize the plants.

Native plants were clear-cut to make way for the illegal crop, and chemical fertilizers were also being used.

The haul was a collaboration between Tulare County narcotics detectives, the state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the federal Bureau of Land Management, the national Forest Service and Park Service, the California National Guard, the state Department of Fish & Game and Visalia police.

From the time the search warrants were served between 6 and 6:30 a.m., about 60 agents and detectives worked for nearly 12 hours digging up the plants, which were airlifted by helicopter to an undisclosed location for burial to decompose.

The Valley's previous single-seizure record also appears to have been in Tulare County, an October 2003 seizure of about 75,000 plants near the Tule River Reservation east of Porterville -- a garden reported as the largest pot bust in the entire state for the year.

That crop had an estimated street value of about $289 million.


(Holy shit, that's a lot of plants, Weedman...........D)

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Researcher

daym!

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Researcher

Hey, it's just a daym plant!

HydroChronic

holy shit!

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LiVeRpOoLFTW

wish i had some of that

SpiralArchitect

Damn.

That is A LOT of bud.

It sounds like these guys weren't good people in general. Stealing someones quad, destroying the forest for their crops -- not cool

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