Thu, Dec 04 2008
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Published September 04, 2008 11:54 pm - It took less time Thursday to burn the 1,135 marijuana plants confiscated a day earlier by area law enforcement officers, than it was to find the stuff. Officers burn marijuana after they find a match By DORIS COOK - Staff Writer Star Beacon LENOX TOWNSHIP — It took less time Thursday to burn the 1,135 marijuana plants confiscated a day earlier by area law enforcement officers, than it was to find the stuff.
All they had to do is find a match. Aided with a helicopter from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation & Identification, Thirty officers from the Trumbull/Ashtabula Group Drug Enforcement Task Force (TAG), Ashtabula County Sheriff’s Department, Geneva and Kinsman Police Departments and Ohio Department of Natural Resources teamed up for the two-day eradication operation, says sheriff’s deputy Lt. Greg Leonhard. “We did one fly-over last week and found 167 plants. Again on Wednesday we were out and found the 1,135 plants, which have a street value of $1,000 a plant,” Leonhard said. There was a slight glitch at the burn site in Lenox Township Thursday. TAG Detective Buddy Felp discovered he and Larry Dougherty with Ashtabula County Sheriff’s Department forgot to bring any matches or a lighter. Both men said they don’t smoke anymore, so they don’t carry a lighter or matches. Felp and Dougherty had piled paper, wood and then heaped the huge pile of marijuana plant on top, then doused the pile with diesel fuel. A little chagrined, Felp finally borrowed a lighter from a tenant, who rents part of the farmhouse where the burning took place. Soon the pile was crackling away as Felp cautioned it would take at least an hour or more to finish the job. “We had to get a court order signed first to do the burning. Common Pleas Judge Ronald Vettel signed the order for us. I don’t know why we forget to bring matches.,” he said laughing. Leonhard said the marijuana plantings are much easier to spot at this time of year planted in corn and soy beans fields. “We did our searches in Gustavus and Kinsman Townships in Trumbull County, Williamsfield, Andover, Cherry Valley and Wayne Townships in Ashtabula County. Some of the spots were the same we searched a year ago,” Leonhard said. 
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