TWO SUSPECTS KILLED IN SHASTA COUNTY MARIJUANA RAID; OFFICERS FIRED ON IN
SEPARATE BUST

MANTON -- Two suspects were fatally shot by drug agents raiding a massive
marijuana garden early Tuesday, the Shasta County sheriff's department said.

Agents said they were greeted by gunfire when they arrived at the garden in
the eastern part of the county just before 7 a.m.

Two suspects were killed during a gun battle with the 40 to 50 police
conducting the raid, said Lt. Denis Carroll. None of the police officers
was injured.

Three men fled and were being sought in the Manton and Shingletown areas by
police who considered them to be armed and dangerous. All three were
wearing dark green T-shirts and green camouflage pants.

Four helicopters helped a beefed-up contingent of about 75 police officers
surround the area, search for the suspects, and bale the marijuana, Carroll
said.

He estimated 20,000 to 30,000 marijuana plants were growing within about a
1 1/2 mile area of steep hillsides in the Shingletown Ridge area. The area
is thick with manzanita trees which camouflaged the plants, he said.

It took most of the day for one suspect's body to be removed from a steep
ravine, Carroll said. Neither man was immediately identified.

The raid was conducted by sheriff's deputies, the Redding Police
Department, two special weapons teams, members of two interagency drug task
forces, and agents of the California Department of Justice.

The state agents were on the periphery and were not involved in the
shootings, said Department of Justice spokeswoman Hallye Jordan.

In Ventura County, a team of narcotics officers seized at least 7,000
mature marijuana plants Tuesday, four days after pot growers shot at a
backcountry hunter.

The seizure was the fourth, and largest, pot farm destroyed by county
officers in the past month and raised the number of marijuana plants cut
down this season to more than 15,960.

A hunter walking near a marijuana grove last weekend in Los Padres National
Forest north of Ojai was fired upon by three men armed with automatic
weapons, officials said. The hunter encountered two more armed men as he
left the area.

The marijuana plants were chopped down, removed and burned. No suspects
were apprehended.

In another raid Tuesday, San Luis Obispo County sheriff's deputies were
fired upon after hiking into a clearing thick with marijuana plants. The
suspected shooter was caught, but several other men fled through the brush,
said Sgt. Pete Hodgkin.

The plants were taken out of the forest by helicopter. Nobody was injured
in the incident, which took place about five miles from Lopez Lake outside
the city of Arroyo Grande, Hodgkin said.