GROW RIPPERS PLEAD GUILTY FOLLOWING HOME INVASION

Four grow rippers have pled guilty in connection with a March 2003
home invasion in which they victimized the occupants of a former
marijuana growing operation.

Joshua David Berner, 20, pled guilty to breaking and entering and
producing an immitation weapon and will be back in Richmond provincial
court on May 25 following the completion of a pre-sentencing report.

While Berner previously pled guilty, three others who were slated to
go to trial on Monday did the same.

Robert Allen Dawson and Peter Brandon Stevens pled guilty to breaking
and entering, while Fraser Paul Williams pled guilty to breaking and
entering and using an immitation firearm. They will be sentenced on
June 28 after a pre-sentencing report has been finished.

On March 10, 2003, four men broke into a house at 7360 Montana Rd.,
apparently looking for marijuana, police said.

But there wasn't any B.C. bud, and instead there were four adults at
home.

Police had previously dismantled a grow-op at the address, but it was
clean at the time of the break-in.

The men kicked in a window and made their way through the house,
knocking down doors in the process.

One victim, a recent immigrant from Taiwan, told The Richmond Review
at the time that he would never have moved into the house had he known
it was previously a grow-op.

"If I knew this I would not come here."

Earlier this year, B.C. Solicitor-General Rich Coleman promised to
bring in a requirement that landlords inform new tenants about a
property's history, and specifically whether it previously housed a
marijuana growing operation.

The B.C. Real Estate Association also began to require homeowners to
include marijuana grow ops and drugs labs in the property disclosure
form that is a part of a home's contract of sale.