LAKE COUNTY?According to a press release from Captain James Bauman, public information officer for the Lake County Sheriff”s Office (LCSO), on Wednesday at about 8 p.m, a deputy on routine patrol spotted a pick-up truck backing out of a wooded area off of Highway 29 south of the Konocti Conservation Camp in Lower Lake.
The deputy stopped to make sure the vehicle had not crashed into the brush. There were four Santa Rosa men associated with the truck; Reynaldo Damian Corrales, 29, Amador Davila Garcia, 35, Juan Amezcua Cornejo, 24, and Carlos Barrera Hernandez, 32.
One of the four men told the deputy they were repairing a gate on the property and were just leaving but none of the men could say who the property owner was or how they could be contacted.
Once other deputies arrived to assist and detain the four men, the deputies checked the wooded area to determine why the men were really there.
About 100-yards into the woods from the highway, deputies located a length of irrigation hose running from a water well up a hillside. Following the hose about 200 yards up the hill, they located a small hand-made water reservoir dug in the ground and several hundred small marijuana plants growing from a seed bed.
When the deputies returned to the truck and confronted the men about the marijuana plants, they were told they had been shown the grow site and provided the marijuana seeds by a man from Santa Rosa.
They said they started the grow about a month prior and were apparently told by the man who provided the seeds that once the marijuana they were growing was harvested, they would all be paid an unspecified amount of money.
All four men were transported and booked at the Lake County Jail on felony charges of cultivating marijuana and possession of marijuana for sale.
Each of the men are held on a $10,000 bond however immigration holds were also placed on all four by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
