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Police come across complex pot farm

Web posted May 2, 1998

By Terry Dickson
Morris News Service

WAYCROSS, Ga. -- A gas-station drive-off led investigators to an elaborate marijuana greenhouse and confiscation of 150 pot plants.

The owner of the home, Andre Joseph Lemieux, 47, had been arrested around dawn Thursday for leaving a gas station without paying and for drunken driving.

Acting on an anonymous tip, deputies got a search warrant to inspect Mr. Lemieux's two-car garage, where they found the robust marijuana plants growing in the sealed garage under bright lights, Ware County Sheriff Ronnie McQuaig said. He said it was the largest indoor pot farm he had seen.

The garage was divided into two rooms, one containing young marijuana plants about 4 feet tall; the other, taller, budding plants, police said. Water was supplied by a garden hose passed through a hole drilled into a wall.

Strong lights in both rooms illuminated them to near-daylight conditions, and the walls of both rooms were white to reflect light onto plants.

A 220-volt electrical line bypassed the home's meter by way of a hollowed-out utility pole and was routed underground to the house, Sheriff McQuaig said.

A bank of transformers inside the garage converted the power to the voltage required by the large lights.

The house was sparsely furnished with two beds and some living room furniture. There was no dining room furniture, and tools were scattered across a tarpaulin on what would typically be the third bedroom of the brick, ranch house.

``We've had a few with a few plants -- eight, 10, 15, something like that -- but never anything this big,'' Sgt. Carl James said.

Sheriff McQuaig said he does not know the street value of the crop. Officers took the weed to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's Savannah crime lab Thursday for weighing. Mr. McQuaig said it will be brought back to Ware County and destroyed.

Mr. Lemieux, a native of Canada, had moved into the house roughly two months ago and had lived previously in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, Sgt. James said.

Until the tip, Mr. Lemieux had aroused no suspicions in the neighborhood, Sgt. James said.

One of Mr. Lemieux's closest neighbors is a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent whose driveway borders Mr. Lemieux's yard.