Deputies Clear Marijuana Plants from Laguna Wilderness Park

Orange County sheriff’s investigators hiked up into the Muddy Canyon area of Laguna Wilderness Park today to yank out thousands of marijuana plants estimated to be worth up to $5 million.

The investigators started the removal of an estimated 2,500 to 4,000 marijuana plants at 7 a.m. and expected the operation to take up to six hours, Orange County sheriff’s Lt. Jeff Hallock said.

Investigators initially thought the plants would be worth about $3 million, Hallock said, but the “plants are more mature than they thought.”

The area is remote enough that the investigators had to hike there and personally pull the plants, Hallock said. They will get help from a sheriff’s helicopter crew, which will lift the plants and move them to a staging area at Coastal Peak Park in Newport Beach, where the vegetation will be bagged as evidence, Hallock said.

The plants were found in an area south of the San Joaquin Hills (73) toll road, east of Newport Coast Drive near East Coastal Peak Park and Ridge Park Road.

--City News Service

PHOTO Marijuana collected by Orange County Sheriff’s deputies. Photo courtesy the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

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