Four workers executed at marijuana grow west of Hennessey
Four Chinese nationals were shot dead execution-style on 20 November 2022 at a licensed marijuana grow west of Hennessey, Oklahoma, and a fifth was wounded. The suspect, a former worker who said he was owed $300,000, was arrested two days later in Miami Beach, Florida.
🇺🇸 Marijuana grow west of Hennessey, Kingfisher County · Oklahoma, United States
Deputies responding to a reported hostage situation on the evening of Sunday 20 November 2022 found four people shot dead at a marijuana growing operation on a 10-acre property west of Hennessey in Kingfisher County.[1][2][3]The victims, three men and one woman, were Chinese nationals, and a fifth Chinese national was found shot multiple times and airlifted to hospital.[1][2][3]The state bureau of investigation said the killer spent a significant time inside the building before the executions began, which was why the first call came in as a hostage situation, and that the attack did not appear random.[1][2]
The suspect, 45-year-old Wu Chen, was arrested without incident on 22 November in Miami Beach, Florida, after a car tag reader flagged his vehicle, and was held for extradition to Oklahoma on murder and shooting-with-intent-to-kill charges.[1][2][3]He had worked at the farm and invested in the operation, and confronted the workers saying he was owed $300,000.[4]
The grow held an active state licence, and the Bureau of Narcotics said investigators were determining whether it had been obtained legally or fraudulently.[2][3]
The case is part of a wider problem of black-market operators in Oklahoma using suspected human trafficking victims, including Chinese nationals, to grow and trim marijuana sold in legal dispensaries.[3]
Photos and video
Law enforcement officers at the grow property northwest of Oklahoma City on Monday 21 November 2022, the day after four workers were found dead and a fifth wounded. Photo: KFOR via NBC NewsPhoto details
The victims were not individually identified in the November 2022 reports.
These reports predate any trial, so later court outcomes are not covered here.
The NBC page repeats the two-day gap between the Sunday killing and the Tuesday arrest, but does not give the date of the arrest itself; 22 November is NBC's own publication-span wording and is already in the report.
The property listing cited by NBC (10 acres, 5,000 square feet of grow space, 50 hoop houses, $999,999 asking price in May 2022) describes the land for sale, not what enforcement found, so it is not recorded as a figure for this event.
Two armed suspects entered a marijuana dispensary on Nadeau Street in Florence-Graham on the evening of 8 October 2026 and exchanged gunfire with an employee, 33-year-old Martin Gudines, who was pronounced dead at the scene. The suspects fled, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau appealed for information.
Josepha Littlewolf Basurto, 31, was found shot dead in a pickup at an illegal marijuana grow outside Covelo on 9 July 2026. By 24 July investigators had arrested three men, including two brothers and their father, and were still seeking a 17-year-old charged with homicide.
Mexican farmworker Jaime Alanís García died on 12 July 2025, two days after falling about 30 feet from a greenhouse during a federal immigration raid on the licensed Glass House Farms cannabis farm near Camarillo. DHS said he was neither in custody nor pursued; his family filed a federal claim alleging an illegal search and excessive force, and Mexico weighed its own legal action.
Mendocino County deputies responding to a 911 hang-up near Covelo on 14 May 2025 found one man fatally shot on Hulls Valley Road, two others wounded, firearms and cartridge casings, and a blood trail leading to a large illegal cannabis grow with hoop houses that investigators linked to a drug-trafficking organization.
