DEPUTIES SHOOT AND KILL MAN GUARDING POT GARDEN

He Had Loaded Shotgun at Grow North of Sams Valley

SAMS VALLEY - Jackson County sheriff's deputies on Wednesday shot and
killed an armed man guarding a marijuana garden deep in the woods
north of Sams Valley.

The sheriff's SWAT team was searching for the garden on Bureau of
Land Management property at around 7 a.m. when they encountered a man
armed with a loaded shotgun, law enforcement authorities said.

Two deputies fired at the man, who is described as a Hispanic adult,
according to Oregon State Police.

A SWAT medic performed emergency aid on the man but he died at the
scene, OSP said.

After the shooting, deputies spotted a second man fleeing the area.
He disappeared in the woods. It is not known if he was armed, OSP said.

The sheriff's office immediately turned the investigation over to
Oregon State Police detectives. Oregon law mandates police agencies
not investigate their own officer-involved shootings.

OSP will release the involved deputies' names at a later date. The
deceased man's information will be released once he has been
positively identified by the medical examiner and attempts to locate
next of kin have been completed.

Once the investigation is completed, the results will be turned over
to the Jackson County District Attorney's Office to determine if the
shooting was justified, OSP said.

The SWAT team believes the marijuana garden belongs to a Mexican drug
cartel, OSP said.

Cartels are large-scale criminal organizations based in Mexico that
deal in weapons and drugs.

The forests in Northern California and Southern Oregon are popular
with the cartels for their marijuana operations.

The 2010 National Drug Threat Assessment released earlier this year
by the U.S. Department of Justice's National Drug Intelligence Center
reported that the number of plants removed from public lands soared
more than 300 percent from 2004 to 2008, primarily at pot gardens of
Mexican drug-trafficking organizations. The cartels favor public land
because its remoteness can limit detection and it can't be seized or
traced back to an owner the way private property can, the report said.

The shooting occurred just days after Southern Oregon sheriff's
departments gave U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., a helicopter tour of
the area's vasts forests. The trip, documented in Sunday's Mail
Tribune, showed hundreds of illegal marijuana gardens sprinkled
throughout Southern Oregon.

The sheriff's agencies are asking the federal government for
additional funds to eradicate illegal marijuana farms.

Sheriff's deputies in Lake County, Calif., shot and killed a man last
week who was guarding a marijuana garden, according to The Associated Press.

The sheriff's department found a weapon cache and a 10,000-plant
garden near where the man was shot. He later was identified as
51-year-old Juan Sanchez Corona.