STOCKTON — Police searched a Weston Ranch home Monday morning, seizing hundreds of marijuana plants and arresting a 25-year-old man suspected of cultivating the crop, the Stockton Record reports.
Stockton Code Enforcement supervisor Jeff Hunt inspects a Weston Ranch house that was used to grow marijuana. The Stockton Police Department arrested the house's suspected operator Monday. Photo by Craig Sanders/Stockton Record
Special Investigations Lt. Eric Ingersoll said the search could have turned fatal. When police knocked on the front door of the home in the 1800 block of Bess Place, Ingersoll said, 25-year-old Michael Gomez tried to sneak out the back door. There was a group of SWAT officers waiting in the backyard.
“He turned to face them, and he had a gun in his hand,” Ingersoll said.
But Officer Dan Grauman, a veteran of the Marine Corps, noticed Gomez was holding the handgun by the slide and was a lesser risk.
Ordered to drop the gun, Gomez did so.
Officer Steve Leonesio, a use-of-force instructor and a member of the SWAT team, said it would not be uncommon for an officer to shoot in a similar scenario. He said it would have been justifiable.
“(Grauman) did a great job of showing restraint,” Leonesio said.
Inside the home, Ingersoll said, police found 232 small marijuana plants.
“They can usually do a grow about every three months,” he said. “Every three plants is about 1 pound dry. It’s about $2,000 to $6,000 per pound, depending on quality.”
The home had been extensively modified to support the operation. Ingersoll said Gomez had also been stealing electricity.
“They trashed that house,” he said.
Detectives are still not certain where the crop was bound or where the operation leads. Their investigation continues.
“We only got the grow end of it,” Ingersoll said. “We’re still trying to tie it up.”
A resident of the neighborhood, Sandra Beddawi, said she was relieved to see police had done something about the house.
She had noticed suspicious activity at the home, a rental, as long as six months ago. She reported it but never heard back.
“I thought there was no interest,” she said. “I thought I was being ignored.”
Gomez was booked into the San Joaquin County Jail on charges of illegal cultivation of marijuana, possession of a firearm and ammunition though forbidden as a convicted felon, and utility theft.
He was being held in lieu of $245,000 bail.
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