The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office and the Washington State Patrol’s Marijuana Enforcement Team arrested one man and secured a large number of marijuana plants, as well as firearms, from a grow operation in the 100 block of Carroll Way in Adna Thursday afternoon, according to the sheriff’s office.
Law enforcement executed a search warrant on the property and discovered it contained a grow operation spread through the residence and multiple outbuildings, according to Lewis County Sheriff Rob Snaza.
An exact count of the plants and firearms seized was also not available Thursday afternoon.
Law enforcement had not released the identity of the man taken into custody as of Thursday night.
“We are continuing the investigation and information will be forthcoming, but we do have enough resources out here and our partnerships with State Patrol and other agencies that led us to this investigation,” Snaza said.
“As the sheriff said, these are becoming more and more common in our community and it is a way to get around the lawful business and a lot of the marijuana that comes from these is being sent back to states where it's not lawful,” Field Operations Bureau Chief Dustin Breen said. “These investigations sometimes take time but this is another one of the fruits of our labor and we don’t have an exact plant count yet but it's a pretty significant growth and luckily we were able to execute the search warrant and everybody’s safe and everything went as planned.”
“We know that there are other grow operations in our communities and we’ll go after each one of them,” said Snaza. “Marijuana growing is not legal unless you have permits and licensing and people work very hard to get those permits and licenses and unfortunately these folks did not do that.”
Regarding the firearms found at the residence and the reason why officers were wearing tactical gear while searching the property, Snaza said, “It just goes to show you that although people downplay illegal grow operations as just nothing violent or anything, the reason is my questioning would be why do you have these firearms and you’re having a large grow operation and probably what you’re doing is protecting your grow. That’s why you see all these men and women out here doing their job and they’re going in there in their tactical equipment to make sure everybody’s safe.”
This story will be updated.
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A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the bust occurred on Carroll Road off of Highway 603. The grow was located on Carroll Way in Adna.
