LASSEN SHERIFF'S SERGEANT SHOT, ONE SUSPECT KILLED

LITTLE VALLEY - One man is dead and six have been arrested after a
gunbattle Tuesday afternoon near an illegal marijuana garden that sent
a Lassen County sheriff's sergeant to the hospital with a gunshot
wound and also injured a sheriff's deputy.

The sergeant and the deputy were part of a task force investigating an
illegal pot plantation south of Dixie Valley, just across the Lassen
County line east of Burney, said Lassen County Sheriff Steve Warren.
The sergeant was flown to Mercy Medical Center in Redding with a
nonlife-threatening wound, the Lassen County Sheriff's Office said.

He reportedly was shot in the arm after he stopped a truck suspected
of being involved with the marijuana garden.

His identity was not released, so his condition could not be checked.
But a Record Searchlight photo of his arrival at the hospital shows
that he was apparently alert and sitting up on the gurney, his right
arm bandaged.

Two of the suspects were arrested on Forest Service Road 22 near where
the two officers were shot, and four were arrested when they were
found in a car on Pittville Road, Warren said.

Names of those arrested and the man who was killed were not
immediately available.

"I want to give props to all the agencies who helped make these
arrests possible today," Warren said Tuesday night.

The Shasta County Sheriff's Office and California Highway Patrol were
among the agencies that helped Lassen deputies.