Pueblo County sheriff’s deputies arrested 16 people in raids on two illegal marijuana-growing operations on opposite sides of the county on 8 and 9 May 2017.[1][2] The sheriff’s office said the two operations were discovered on a Monday on opposite sides of the county.[3] Those held were accused of cultivating and possessing marijuana, and most of them were Cubans.[1] Many of the group had moved from Florida to Colorado, where growing marijuana was legal for medical use and personal recreation.[1]
The two raids yielded 128 marijuana plants and 113 kilograms of dried marijuana ready for shipment.[1][2] The sheriff’s office put the potential street-sale value of the haul at about half a million dollars.[3][2] At a house in Avondale, near Pueblo, officers found about 70 plants in a large garage and detained three of the accused there.[1]
Those detained had been growing and processing the drug to send it illegally to other states through a wide trafficking network.[1] They told officers they were working as unpaid volunteers.[1] The sheriff’s office said residents had tipped it off to both operations.[3] The sheriff’s office said further arrests were expected as investigations into both grows continued.[1]
Detectives found 57 plants in various stages of growth and the drying marijuana at the North Bear Gulch Lane home in Pueblo West, where 14 people were arrested and where workers were harvesting with commercial-grade trimming equipment.[2] The tenant of the Pueblo West home, aged 33, told detectives the grow was his and his wife’s and that he was growing for medicinal purposes but could not provide the required paperwork.[2] The Pueblo West workers told detectives they had volunteered to help and were not being paid, and the sheriff’s office said the tenant did not know all of them but described them as family and friends who had moved from Florida with ties to Cuba, Argentina and the Dominican Republic.[2] At the home on U.S. 50 East in Avondale, detectives found more than 70 plants in a detached four-car garage and seized 71 plants; a 48-year-old woman and a man aged 32 were arrested on suspicion of cultivation of marijuana.[2] The Avondale residents said they had recently moved from Louisiana and had lived at the home for only a month, and the sheriff’s office said the arrested man has ties to Cuba while the women have ties to Honduras.[2] The sheriff’s office said two people who were not at the Avondale home claimed responsibility for that grow, no proper documentation for a legal medical grow was provided, and additional arrests may follow in both cases.[2]
