MARIJUANA PLANT CATCHES THE EYE OF GIRL-WATCHER

Duluth police were skeptical when Elliott Ricehill and John Wickman
walked into headquarters Tuesday afternoon and said marijuana was
growing just outside City Hall.

But a 3-foot plant growing in the northern corner of the Civic Center
courtyard proved to be marijuana. And another, smaller plant was
growing next to it.

"Someone put it there as a joke," said Ted Griak, manager of the
city's park and street maintenance division, which tends to the
courtyard's shrubbery and flowers. "We plant in the spring, but we
don't plant marijuana."

Ricehill, 26, spotted the illegal weed while he and Wickman were
girl-watching from an upper floor of City Hall. When he watched a
woman rounding a sidewalk from the St. Louis County Courthouse to City
Hall, he noticed the plant.

"I knew it was marijuana," he said. "I'm a Southern boy. I lived in
the mountains most of my life so I know marijuana when I see it."

A closer look confirmed his suspicions and the pair headed for police
headquarters in City Hall to report their find.

The plant was in a slight clearing behind rows of flowers and bushes,
partially hidden from the view of passers-by. With lots of sun and the
benefit of the courtyard's sprinkler system, it appeared healthy.

Police pulled out the contraband weed and took it into custody.
Preliminary tests verified it was marijuana.

Sgt. Scott Lyons, who heads the department's nar-cotics unit, said
police will try to find out who planted it.

"I would be more concerned, though, if there had been several plants
rather than this isolated plant," Lyons said.

The illegal planting wasn't the first for the Civic Center.

"It's an attention getter," Lyons said. "A year or two ago we found a
smaller plant in another spot in the Civic Center after somebody
pointed it out to us."