On the morning of 9 September 2013, Humboldt County sheriff’s deputies assisted by CalFire, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the county drug task force served a Superior Court search warrant on a 160-acre parcel off State Route Highway 36 near mile marker 31.54 at Bridgeville.[1][2] Deputies detained twelve suspects across the property while a thirteenth fled into the brush, and hours later officers recaptured the fugitive, identified as Yul Cashman, with a police dog after he ignored orders to surrender.[1]
In a 60-by-30-foot shop with living quarters used to process and dry marijuana, officers found about 375 pounds (about 170 kg) of hanging harvested marijuana, and in four 40-by-80-foot greenhouses they found 685 budding plants six to seven feet tall, all of which were removed.[1][2] Officers also seized a semiautomatic 9 mm handgun from a suspect’s vehicle, $10,422 in cash, scales and packaging material indicating sales for profit.[1][2]
Officers reported major environmental damage, including clearcut trees, illegal roads cut into the hillside and a pump draining Little Larabee Creek dry downstream, a federally protected steelhead stream.[1][2] Thirteen people were arrested at the first site on cultivation and possession-for-sale charges, with several also held on immigration and customs holds, and Cashman was additionally charged with resisting arrest after the dog bite.[1]
While processing the first site, officers found a second grow on an adjoining parcel, obtained a second warrant, and at about 1 p.m. seized 1,026 plants one to five feet tall from three greenhouses along with ammunition and further environmental violations including raw sewage draining into the creek.[1] Three more suspects were arrested there, including Michael Kenneth Metelits, 42, of Fortuna, who faced additional streambed-alteration, water-pollution and timber charges and was reported wanted in Virginia for shipping marijuana from Fortuna.[1]
