On the morning of 5 August 2005, a marijuana eradication team raided a large grow at the base of Mount Umunhum in the Santa Clara County mountains.[1] Two guards ambushed the officers around 7 a.m., shooting California Department of Fish and Game warden Kyle Kroll, 25, through both of his legs; sheriff’s deputies shot and killed the other guard, 33-year-old East Palo Alto resident Armando Aguilar.[1] The second guard fled, and more than three dozen camouflaged SWAT officers dropped in by helicopter searched the steep terrain until the search was called off at sunset.[1]

Officers found as many as 50,000 mature marijuana plants spread across two to three acres, in what the sheriff’s office described as a mile-long stretch of plants on a 17,000-acre open-space reserve that is closed to the public.[1] The reserve’s land manager said it was not the first growing operation found there.[1]

Four years later, sheriff’s officials said Aguilar had ties to a drug-trafficking organization based in Michoacan, Mexico, and that the second guard was never caught.[2]