Kent Police recently raided an East Hill home and confiscated 596 marijuana plants worth an estimated street value of about $300,000.
Officers arrested a man who lived at the house for investigation of operating an illegal marijuana grow, according to the police report. Seven rooms or areas of the home in the 19200 block of 121st Place Southeast were set up with growing lights for the marijuana.
“Street value can be up to $500 dollars a plant,” said police spokesman Jarod Kasner in an email.
Police used a search warrant to enter the home on Nov. 11 and found plants in numerous rooms. Neighborhood residents called police in early September to report suspicious circumstances at the home, including men loading large plastic garbage bags into rental trucks. The bags reportedly contained cultivated marijuana.
The police department’s Special Investigations Unit began to look into the case. Detectives used a search warrant to get Puget Sound Energy records that showed the home using between 11,000 to 18,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per month, according to the police report. The report also indicated that the average home uses about 1,000 kWh per month.
Detectives found out an Oregon couple bought the home in May for $382,000 but didn’t live at the home, maintaining their Portland addresses. A single man lived at the home.
Because the man wasn’t at home when officers showed up with the search warrant, police used a battering ram to enter the home. The man later showed up at the house in his vehicle but quickly left. Police had seen the same vehicle numerous times at the home. Officers pulled the man over a short distance from the home in Renton and arrested him.
Inside the home, police found anywhere from 36 to 234 plants in various rooms or areas of the house. The garage had been set up as a place to bag the marijuana.
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