MAN DIES IN SHOOTOUT NEAR POT FARM

LYTLE CREEK: Agents return fire and kill the gunman during a raid,
but two others escape, authorities say.

A gunman opened fire on officers raiding a large marijuana farm in
the remote hills north of Fontana on Monday morning, sparking a
shootout that left the man dead and two others on the run.

The two camouflaged men, possibly carrying automatic weapons, managed
to elude capture during an intensive, daylong search by a force of at least 40.

By nightfall, the search was postponed. The plants were removed, and
there were no immediate plans to continue the manhunt today, officials said.

Authorities believed the pot farmers spent the summer living in
rugged U.S. Forest Service territory southwest of Lytle Creek, as
they raised roughly 2,500 marijuana plants with the aid of a
makeshift watering system, said Jodi Miller, spokeswoman for the San
Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.

Amid steep, dry brush ravines hidden from the closest road, the men
are believed to have spent months growing their crop.

Just before 8 a.m. Monday, a multi-agency task force closed in on the
farm, one of dozens discovered this year throughout the region.
Narcotics experts say such farms, and the violence they bring, are a
growing problem.

In this case, 11 officers of the Campaign Against Marijuana
Production, including federal investigators and Riverside and San
Bernardino county sheriff's deputies, prepared to eradicate the
plants, which were estimated to have a street value of $6 million to
$9 million.

Man Opens Fire

After hearing rustling in the bushes and seeing three men in
camouflage, the deputies identified themselves, Miller said. One of
the men, perched atop a hill, shot at them several times.

No one was hit and task force members returned fire, wounding him,
Miller said. The man was airlifted to the nearby ranger station,
where he died an hour later.

He remained unidentified Monday evening after attempts to match his
fingerprints failed.

"You wonder why they'd decide to shoot it out," San Bernardino County
sheriff's Sgt. Rick Ells, a department spokesman, said of the
suspects. "But I guess if you're living in the forest, it feels like
your terrain, and you think you should defend it."

Next to the man's body, authorities found a shotgun and other
weapons, Miller said. Thirty more officers were called to the scene
to search for two men who got away. Authorities said they might have
been armed with automatic weapons.

For the next 10 hours, search and rescue workers, SWAT officers and
narcotics detectives combed 2 square miles for signs of the men.
Helicopters buzzed above, occasionally dropping SWAT officers into
the steep hills to search on foot.

Sheriff's detectives said the men created an irrigation system for
the plants by connecting hoses to a nearby water source.

Last fall, members of the sheriff's marijuana eradication team
dismantled a similar 5,000-plant operation in the San Bernardino
Mountains and arrested seven Mexican nationals who were suspected of
living in the woods to guard it. Those men, however, were not armed.

No further information on the men involved in Monday's bust and
shootout was released.

Members of crime enterprises ran many of the marijuana farms
discovered this year in the area, officials said.

Across California and the nation, experts say 80 percent of outdoor
pot plantations are on public land, the vast majority cultivated by
Mexican citizens working for Mexican drug trafficking groups.

In California, an estimated 3.5 million pot plants--worth roughly $14
billion--were seized in 2006, according to federal records.

And the work is becoming increasingly violent.

"We're seeing more instances of these people being armed," said Ron
Brooks, president of the National Narcotics Officers' Associations' Coalition.

The first shooting of an officer during a pot-plantation raid in
California occurred last year in Santa Clara County when a state
Department of Fish and Game warden was wounded in both legs, said
Tommy LaNier, director of the National Marijuana Initiative, which
helps fund and coordinate the fight against major marijuana
traffickers. The grower was also killed, LaNier said.

LaNier said. "We're seeing that they're becoming more hostile," he said.

Suitable Spot for Growing

Forest Service officials said the area where the pot farm north of
Fontana was found has been closed to the public for some time because
of fire danger. But its remote location and accessibility to a
year-round spring make it suitable for growing marijuana.

"It's quite the problem," said Forest Service District Ranger Gabe
Garcia, noting that the department's national budget for law
enforcement is one of the few within the organization receiving more
money each year.

Garcia said prevention is difficult because pulling over drivers in
the area is impractical, and discovering the small plants from a
helicopter is often impossible. Still, they try.

"Every year at this time, you see the helicopters circling these
hills," said Steve Barchers, a 10-year Lytle Creek resident who
stopped at the command post on Lytle Creek Road, a half-mile west of
the searchers, on his way to a golf outing.

His brother, noting that the area has been trashed before by people
believed to be pot farmers, said he no longer goes anywhere near it.

"It's a sketchy place to go hiking or biking now," Kevin Barchers said.

But the public is unlikely to stumble into remote marijuana groves
because growers intentionally locate them away from hiking trails,
said Sarah Pullen, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

"They want to be hidden," Pullen said. "They don't want to be
detected by anyone."