A State Bureau of Investigation pilot on a routine air search spotted a marijuana field on a remote wooded property off Carolina Hill Road about seven miles east of Siler City on Thursday 12 July 2001.[1] Chatham County investigators went out that afternoon and found plants at the base of a ravine, then posted guards and made a plan with SBI investigators overnight.[1]
At 8 a.m. on Friday 13 July, 30 officers including National Guard troops and US Forest Service officials moved through the property with machetes while the Forest Service cut a road through the woods with a bulldozer.[1] They found several fields with plants from two-inch seedlings to nine-footers, growth some deputies compared to a rain forest, plus a campsite with a tent, fresh eggs and hot dogs suggesting someone had recently watched the crop.[1]
Investigators first estimated 9,000 plants, then found 11,000 seedlings in nearby beds plus more full-grown plants, pushing the counted total to 22,999.[1] The plants were counted individually as they were loaded into a camouflaged National Guard truck while helicopters and planes circled overhead, and Attorney General Roy Cooper attended the operation.[1] His office called the seizure one of the largest in North Carolina history, amounting to nearly one-third of the 47,953 plants seized statewide in the first half of the year.[1] The National Drug Intelligence Center later described the two-acre site as one of the largest cultivation sites ever seized in the state.[2]
The deputies hacked the plants down and trucked them to the landfill to burn them the same day, taking no chances after 5,000 pounds of confiscated marijuana had been stolen from the sheriff’s custody the year before.[1] No one was charged with growing the marijuana.[1]
