Capt. James Bauman of the Lake County Sheriff's Office reported that Reynaldo Damian Corrales, 29; Amador Davila Garcia, 35; Juan Amezcua Cornejo, 24; and 32-year-old Carlos Barrera Hernandez were arrested late Wednesday on felony charges of cultivating marijuana and possession of marijuana for sale.
Bauman said that a sheriff's deputy on routine patrol spotted a pic-up truck backing out of a wooded area off of Highway 29 – south of the Konocti Conservation Camp in Lower Lake – on Wednesday at about 8 p.m. He said the deputy stopped to make sure the vehicle had not crashed into the brush.
One of the four men told the deputy they had been 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, Bauman said.
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, according to Bauman.
About 100 yards into the woods from the highway, deputies located a length of irrigation hose running from a water well up a hillside, said Bauman. Following the hose about 200 yards up the hill, they located a small handmade water reservoir dug in the ground and several hundred small marijuana plants growing from a seed bed.
Bauman said 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.
The men also 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, Bauman said.
Bauman said all four suspects 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 Bauman noted that immigration holds were also placed on all four by federal immigration officials.
