PLANT POTS FILLED WITH PLANTED POT

Police called to assist paramedics find marijuana and plant-growing lights
in a Morgan Township home.

MORGAN TWP. - Porter County police say they were in the right place at the
right time to uncover a pot-growing operation in a home four miles south of
Valparaiso.

It started with a medical emergency call about 4:10 a.m. Wednesday to the
100 block of South County Road 150E from a woman with pain from a back
injury that left her confined to her bed.

When medics from Porter Memorial Hospital in Valparaiso arrived, they found
the home locked and the woman unable to let them inside. The 41-year-old
woman provided the security code to a 911 operator so her rescuers could
enter the garage door. But medics were leery about entering a secured home
without police there, said Patrolman Chris Eckert.

So county officers were dispatched.

Before she left for the hospital, the woman asked police to make sure the
interior lights were turned off and her cats were in the house, said county
Patrolman Chris Eckert. The woman's husband wasn't home.

As police went through the house, they saw a light on in the recreation
room of the basement and went to turn it off, Eckert said.

The brightness turned out to be a growing light with a timer for 10 potted
marijuana plants, each about 24 to 30 inches tall, police said. Eckert said
there also was a plastic tub containing marijuana and numerous bottles of
plant-growing products, along with two bags of potting soil.

The officers contacted Bob Taylor, coordinator of the Porter County
Narcotics Unit. Taylor said he collected the evidence and took pictures.
"The woman was in pain and kind of out of it, but she was real
cooperative," Taylor said.

Eckert reported that once the officers saw what appeared to be marijuana
plants and growing equipment, they received consent from the woman to
search the basement.

Taylor said officers would seek a charge of cultivating marijuana today in
Porter Superior Court against the 42-year-old husband. The felony charge
carries up to a three-year sentence, he said.

Taylor said the woman was cooperative and claimed the marijuana plants
belong to her husband.