SIX HELD IN CUSTODY FROM RECORD MARIJUANA BUST

SAN ANDREAS -- Calaveras County narcotics agents had six suspects in
custody Monday from Friday's record-setting marijuana bust, and the plant
count was boosted to more than 11,000.

It had been reported as 10,152 plants Friday. But when the various teams of
officers combined their numbers, it turned out to be 11,643, Undersheriff
Randy Grasmuck said Monday. That's more than triple the previous record for
a Calaveras County pot bust, and was the biggest in California this year,
state agents said.

The raid involved about 50 county and state officers who sneaked up on a
plantation at Hog Back Mountain, some three miles southwest of San Andreas.
When they appeared, a group of people working the plantation ran in
different directions.

Two -- Lorenso Gudero, 38, and Gerardo Mara, 33 -- were tackled and
arrested. They were booked on suspicion of felony marijuana cultivation and
also on weapons charges because agents found loaded sawed-off shotguns and
a loaded Russian military rifle in camps at the site.

At least six other workers escaped into the countryside. But Friday night,
Grasmuck said, two deputies found a group of four of them walking along
Highway 12, about four miles northwest of the plantation.

As the deputies stopped to question them, a narcotics officer stopped on
his way home from disposing of the plants. He recognized one of the men as
someone he had seen through a telescope surveillance of the plantation a
day before the raid.

After hearing that, the four admitted that they had come from the pot
plantation, sheriff's Lt. Mike Walker said.

They were Fidel Ramirez, 18; Ciariano Ramirez, 27; Eleajar Valencia, 41,
and Juan Magallow, 19.

All of the suspects are to be arraigned today in Calaveras County Municipal
Court. They are all believed to be from Mexico, and their immigration
status has not been determined. Officials from the federal Immigration and
Naturalization Service were to try figuring that out today, Walker said.

As far as investigators know, they were working at the plantation, not
owners of it. Walker said he couldn't predict arrests of the entrepreneurs.

"But we're working on it."

Checked-by: Pat Dolan