Deputies find bags of suspected marijuana in home

June 28, 2005|by DAVE McMILLION

CHARLES TOWN, W.Va. - In this bust, police didn't have to go searching.

The operator came to them.

Police said they found 12 garbage bags stuffed with suspected marijuana at a home in the Shannondale area of Jefferson County on Sunday afternoon after a woman decided to "come clean" about growing the drug.

"We don't get this often," said Detective Victor Lupis of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department.

The woman, who is not being identified, has not been arrested, Lupis said. Police are continuing their investigation of the case, said Lupis, who made the find along with Deputy D.C. Tabler.

The woman first contacted the Fairfax County (Va.) Police Department about the operation, Lupis said.

After authorities determined the house was in Jefferson County, the woman agreed to meet sheriff's department investigators at the West Virginia/Virginia line Sunday about 5 p.m., Lupis said.

The woman took investigators to a house in Shannondale, a subdivision on Blue Ridge Mountain, Lupis said.

The house, owned by the woman and her husband, is near gate two, one of the main entrances to Shannondale, Lupis said.

"She opened the door and led us to what you see now," Lupis said to reporters in a room at the sheriff's department Monday.

Piled on a table in the room were 12 green garbage bags full of suspected marijuana. The suspected drug had been cut and put into the bags, Lupis said.

The suspected marijuana was grown in the basement of the home in a hydroponics operation, Lupis said.

Police also confiscated an electronic scale, bags used for packaging and two tanks of carbon dioxide, which help plants grow quicker, investigators said.

Police said they are still trying to determine how much the drug would be worth on the street. The growing operation had existed for about two years, Lupis said.

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