Harvest season

Deputy-involved shooting leaves one dead
updated: Deputy kills armed man at marijuana grow
One person is confirmed dead in a deputy-involved shooting today in the McCann area, but other details are not yet available.
Humboldt County Coroner Frank Jager said his office has been contacted but has not yet responded to the area, which according to scanner traffic is on Pacific Lumber land.
Jager said the deputy is not the one who died.
Scanner traffic started around noon and indicated a number of agencies and personnel were responding to the area, including Calfire.
A helicopter was called in and a Palco security guard let other responding personnel in a locked gate.
The Humboldt County Sheriff's Department said it was still receiving information and would be releasing some details later in the afternoon. TS

Sheriff's deputy kills armed man
One of two Humboldt County sheriff’s deputies investigating a marijuana-growing operation Wednesday in the southern part of the county shot and killed a man allegedly armed with a shotgun.

Details were still scarce Wednesday night, but a news release issued late afternoon stated the deputies were conducting the investigation near the Larabee Valley on land owned by Pacific Lumber Co.

During that investigation, the release stated, “A suspect armed with a shotgun confronted the deputies. One deputy fired his departmentally issued handgun, killing the suspect.”

The names of the suspect and the deputies involved in the shooting were not included in the news release.

Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Brenda Godsey said shortly before 5 p.m. that deputies and investigators were still arriving at the scene of the shooting, near Holmes, and any additional information would be released by Sheriff Gary Philp at a news conference scheduled for this morning.

An investigation into the circumstances surrounding the shooting is under way, the release stated. Consistent with Sheriff’s Office policy, both deputies have been placed on administrative leave.

The shooting death comes at the tail end of a record-breaking season for local marijuana interdiction efforts.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Wayne Hanson said Sept. 21 that more than 300,000 plants had been destroyed to date during the 2007 outdoor growing season, including 135,000 plants uprooted in August in what officials called the single largest pot bust in Humboldt County history.

That growing operation and several others like it have been traced by investigators back to Mexican national drug-trafficking organizations, whose typically large-scale operations on public and private timberland have prompted numerous warnings to hunters and hikers throughout Northern California.

Godsey said it was too early in the investigation to say whether the growing operation found Wednesday was believed to be related to the cartels.

“Due to the remote location and difficult terrain, we’re still assembling our investigative team at the scene,” she said. ER
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Updates:
The man was identified as Eloy Infante-Toscano, 40 years old.
A little over 460 drying plants were found and would have been converted into about 40 pounds of processed pot, which would have fetched a street price of about $100,000.
ER Man leveled shotgun at deputy
TS Sheriff: Armed man pointed gun at deputy/Grow may be related to earlier bust (with press conference video (pretty glitchy) TS)
TS Man shot by deputy was hit three times
TS Nearly 500 pounds of marijuana found at shooting scene
ER Pot crop valued at $100,000, Sheriff's Office official says
ER - Pot field shooting 'justified,' sheriff says