SUSPECT SLAIN, WARDEN WOUNDED IN POT RAID SHOOTOUT

One suspect was killed and a Fish and Game warden was shot in the leg
this morning when a shootout erupted during a raid on a marijuana
farm in the hills near Los Gatos.

A manhunt is under way in the steep, rugged terrain of Mount Umunhum
for a second armed suspect who fled the gunfight. Authorities do not
know whether the man is injured.

About a half-dozen officers from several agencies began the
eradication program at 5 a.m., beginning a 1 1/2-hour hike up to a 2-
to 3-acre parcel where up to 10,000 mature marijuana plants had been
detected. The land, which is closed to the public, is owned by the
Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District.

About 7 a.m., officers encountered two armed men who apparently had
been guarding the farm, said Terrance Helm, spokesman for the Santa
Clara County Sheriff's Department.

Details were still being determined, as radio communication is poor
in the remote area, but someone started shooting, Helm said.

The warden, Kyle Kroll, 27, of Mountain View, was hit in one leg by a
bullet that then traveled through the extremity to his other leg,
Helm said. His injuries are not life-threatening.

Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the Fish and Game Department, said
Kroll was airlifted to Eden Valley Medical Center in Castro Valley.

"It makes no sense," Helm said of the shootout. "Generally, when they
know law enforcement is coming, they flee. They generally don't shoot
it out with the cops."

The eradication project began as a routine one for the Campaign
Against Marijuana Planting, run by the California Department of
Justice. CAMP, as it is called, has five teams that work throughout
the state trying to locate and destroy marijuana plants, which are
harvested at this time of year.

CAMP began its first raids of the season on Thursday, removing about
5,000 plants from Big Basin State Park north of Santa Cruz, said Bob
Cooke, special agent in charge of the Department of Justice Bureau of
Narcotic Enforcement in San Jose.

Last year, he said, authorities destroyed between 600,000 and 700,000
plants statewide. The harvest season, when the raids are conducted,
runs through the end of September.

The farm raided today was larger than authorities initially thought,
Cooke said. They suspected that about 10,000 plants were being grown
on 2 or 3 acres. But they discovered the swath to be about a mile
long, Cooke said, and it could be yielding up to 50,000 plants. The
plants stand about 4- to 5-feet tall.

Each plant is worth about $4,000 in street sales, Cooke said, so it's
not surprising that they are guarded so heavily.

Most of the large scale marijuana-growing operations in California
are based out of Mexico, he said.

He estimated that it would take about a dozen people to cultivate the
crop on Mount Umunhum.

Officers from the California Highway Patrol, the California Division
of Forestry, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department, the
Department of Fish and Game and the San Jose Police Department were
working out of a command center that had been set up at the Los Gatos
Christian Church at 16845 Hicks Road.

Three helicopters were being used in the search. John Maciel,
operations manager for the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District,
said that the marijuana was being grown on a preserve that is marked
closed to the public because it has not been developed for recreational use.