$1.45 million worth of marijuana found growing on the Eastern Shore
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Version 0 of 1. Maryland police found more than 700 marijuana plants, each more than six feet tall, growing at an abandoned home — and almost two months later, they still don’t know who was growing the copious amount of weed. The Queen Anne’s County Sheriff’s Office announced Tuesday that it had seized the marijuana in a covert operation in August, and is still in the process of investigating the growers. The street value of the plants would be about $1.45 million, the office said. The seizure happened in Chesterville, on the Eastern Shore, the sheriff’s office said. Maryland State Police troopers were the first to suspect that an abandoned home, boarded up with plywood and sitting on a rarely visited 15-acre property, might be a marijuana farm. Investigators from Kent and Queen Anne’s counties scoped out the property for days and saw no one coming or going, the Queen Anne’s County sheriff’s office said. On Aug. 20, a team of police officers from numerous state and local agencies knocked on the door of the abandoned home, then forced their way in when no one answered. The investigators found a set-up in the basement of the house for starting marijuana plants, then a field outdoors where the seedlings were planted to grow bigger. All 714 plants were six- to 10-feet tall, the sheriff’s office said. Police had to borrow a backhoe from a neighbor to explore all the marijuana plots. The plants seemed healthy, the sheriff’s office said, thanks to a homemade irrigation and fertilizer system. The growers had left behind a pit bull to guard their fields. The sheriff’s office said the dog went to an animal shelter and has already been adopted. Though investigators have “several strong leads,” they have not made any arrests, sheriff’s office spokesman Dale Patrick said. Dana Hedgpeth contributed to this report. |