Up to 12,000 marijuana plants cleared from a Greene County hollow
Third Judicial District Drug Task Force agents and Greene County officers cut thousands of marijuana plants from a hollow off Warrensburg Road on 13 September 2007 after a farmer reported the patch; one armed guard was arrested while others fled.
🇺🇸 Warrensburg Road, Greene County, Tennessee · Tennessee, United States
A farmer’s tip led the Third Judicial District Drug Task Force and Greene County Sheriff’s Office to
a marijuana field about a mile off Warrensburg Road on the afternoon of 13 September 2007.[1]Task Force Director Scott Castle said one of four armed men guarding the plot was arrested that
afternoon while three others remained at large.[2]
Air and ground search
Tennessee Highway Patrol helicopter pilot Lieutenant Terry Botts helped verify the field and locate
the armed suspect, according to a Department of Safety release.[2]The release described the
patch as 50 to 75 yards wide and 600 to 700 yards long, with an estimated eight to twelve thousand
plants five to fourteen feet tall and a street value of about one million dollars.[2]
Greeneville Sun reporting from the scene said agents had watched the patch for several days before
moving in, and that officers worked until after dark cutting plants and hauling them out on all-
terrain vehicles.[1]Sheriff Steve Burns estimated about 8,000 “well-budded” plants and said
suspects had been living in an abandoned log structure with food and cooking gear on the property.[1]The same article said officers seized a .22-calibre semiautomatic rifle and an “AK-47-type” assault
rifle abandoned in the field.[1]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
Tennessee’s Department of Safety estimated 8,000 to 12,000 plants while Sheriff Steve Burns told the Greeneville Sun he believed there were about 8,000; the reports agree on dimensions but not on a single plant count.
The state release said four armed suspects were guarding the field and one was arrested; local reporting the next day suggested only two men may have escaped, after officers thought one fugitive was seen twice.
Agents abandoned an AK-47-type rifle and a .22-calibre semiautomatic rifle in the patch; the opened articles do not say whether those weapons were tied to the man arrested on the scene.
California's Unified Cannabis Enforcement Task Force seized or destroyed 55,308 pounds of illicit cannabis and eradicated 108,226 plants between July and September 2026, Governor Gavin Newsom's office said. The quarter's operations across nine counties led to 14 arrests, nine firearms and $29,215 in cash, and brought the state's nine-month total to more than $230 million in cannabis.
Arrested 14Plants destroyed 108,226Cannabis 25.0873 t
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