Suspect slain, warden wounded in pot raid shootout

Suspect slain, warden wounded in pot raid shootout
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/08/05/BAwarden05.DTL
Wyatt Buchanan and Suzanne Herel, SF Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, August 5, 2005

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(08-05) 12:56 PDT Los Gatos (SF Chronicle) --
One suspect was killed and a Fish and Game warden
was shot in the leg this morning when a shootout
erupted during a raid on a marijuana farm in the
hills near Los Gatos.

A manhunt is under way in the steep, rugged
terrain of Mount Umunhum for a second armed
suspect who fled the gunfight. Authorities do not
know whether the man is injured.

About a half-dozen officers from several agencies
began the eradication program at 5 a.m.,
beginning a 1?-hour hike up to a 2- to 3-acre
parcel where up to 10,000 mature marijuana plants
had been detected. The land, which is closed to
the public, is owned by the Midpeninsula Regional
Open Space District.

About 7 a.m., officers encountered two armed men
who apparently had been guarding the farm, said
Terrance Helm, spokesman for the Santa Clara
County Sheriff's Department.

Details were still being determined, as radio
communication is poor in the remote area, but
someone started shooting, Helm said.

The warden, Kyle Kroll, 27, of Mountain View, was
hit in one leg by a bullet that then traveled
through the extremity to his other leg, Helm
said. His injuries are not life-threatening.

Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the Fish and
Game Department, said Kroll was airlifted to Eden
Valley Medical Center in Castro Valley.

"It makes no sense," Helm said of the shootout.
"Generally, when they know law enforcement is
coming, they flee. They generally don't shoot it
out with the cops."

The eradication project began as a routine one
for the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, run
by the California Department of Justice. CAMP, as
it is called, has five teams that work throughout
the state trying to locate and destroy marijuana
plants, which are harvested at this time of year.

CAMP began its first raids of the season on
Thursday, removing about 5,000 plants from Big
Basin State Park north of Santa Cruz, said Bob
Cooke, special agent in charge of the Department
of Justice Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement in San
Jose.

Last year, he said, authorities destroyed between
600,000 and 700,000 plants statewide. The harvest
season, when the raids are conducted, runs
through the end of September.

The farm raided today was larger than authorities
initially thought, Cooke said. They suspected
that about 10,000 plants were being grown on 2 or
3 acres. But they discovered the swath to be
about a mile long, Cooke said, and it could be
yielding up to 50,000 plants.Ê The plants stand
about 4- to 5-feet tall.

Each plant is worth about $4,000 in street sales,
Cooke said, so it's not surprising that they are
guarded so heavily.

Most of the large scale marijuana-growing
operations in California are based out of Mexico,
he said.

He estimated that it would take about a dozen
people to cultivate the crop on Mount Umunhum.

Officers from the California Highway Patrol, the
California Division of Forestry, the Santa Clara
County Sheriff's Department, the Department of
Fish and Game and the San Jose Police Department
were working out of a command center that had
been set up at the Los Gatos Christian Church at
16845 Hicks Road.

Three helicopters were being used in the search.
John Maciel, operations manager for the
Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, said
that the marijuana was being grown on a preserve
that is marked closed to the public because it
has not been developed for recreational use.

E-mail the writers at wbuchanan [at] sfchronicle.com and sherel [at] sfchronicle.com.