Two growers shot dead as officers raid Shasta marijuana garden
Two growers were shot dead on 16 September 2003 when they exchanged gunfire with officers raiding a 27,262-plant marijuana garden near Manton in eastern Shasta County; three suspects fled and three weapons were seized.
🇺🇸 Manton area, eastern Shasta County · California, United States
Two suspected growers were fatally shot by drug agents raiding a large
marijuana garden near Manton in the eastern part of Shasta County early on
Tuesday 16 September 2003.[1][2]Agents said they were met with gunfire when
they arrived at the garden just before 7 a.m., and the two men died in the
resulting gun battle with 40 to 50 officers conducting the raid.[2]None of
the officers was injured.[2]
California’s Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) said its personnel had
assisted the Shasta County Sheriff’s Department with the eradication of 27,262
marijuana plants at the site.[3]The two suspects were shot and killed when
they assaulted local law enforcement officers, and three further suspects
remained at large after the shooting.[3]Officers seized three weapons at the
garden: a .22 caliber pistol, a second pistol and a 7.62 mm SKS assault
rifle.[3]
The state Attorney General said the Shasta and Butte County gardens raided that
week each held between 8,000 and 30,000 plants and were believed to be under
the control of Mexican drug organizations.[1]Three men had fled the Manton
scene and were being sought in the Manton and Shingletown areas as armed and
dangerous, and the reports name none of the dead or missing men and give no
later arrests or charges from this raid.[2]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
The two dead men are unnamed in the opened sources, as are the three suspects who fled.
The Attorney General's release groups the Shasta and Butte County gardens at 8,000 to 30,000 plants each, while the CAMP annual report gives 27,262 plants for Shasta; this report uses the CAMP figure.
The Butte County raid three days later, in which two more growers were killed, is a separate event left out here.
No photograph of this raid with a recoverable direct image address was found in the opened sources.
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.
