An aerial search guided Wayne County officers to marijuana fields near Black Jack Church and Ferry Bridge roads in western Wayne County in June 2006.[1][2] The search was run by the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office with the National Guard and the State Bureau of Investigation, which located 15,284 plants; the sheriff’s search-and-rescue team, volunteers and the Goldsboro-Wayne County Drug Squad assisted on the ground.[1] Officials said the crop would have had an estimated street value of 36.5 million dollars had the plants reached maturity.[1]

Sheriff Carey Winders said in September that no arrests had been made in the cases despite several leads, saying it was very hard to find who grew the marijuana.[1] By September the investigation covered more than 21,000 plants seized across several county cases that summer, with the growers still unidentified.[1] The county drug squad said the June seizure reflected a wider rise in outdoor marijuana growing in the county that year.[2]