About 75 pounds of marijuana were seized at a property on
Airline Highway on Thursday.
Detectives from the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department
collaborated with officers from the Unified Narcotics Enforcement
Team in San Benito County to recover the drugs.
About 75 pounds of marijuana were seized at a property on Airline Highway on Thursday.
Detectives from the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department collaborated with officers from the Unified Narcotics Enforcement Team in San Benito County to recover the drugs.
The marijuana was located in a barn at 29401 Airline Highway, and was hidden in a haystack, said Sgt. Gregg Collins of the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department.
“He had two layers of hay on top, and it was down in the depression covered with a piece of plywood,” Collins said.
Detectives conducted a search warrant of the property, which they said is owned by convicted felon Robert Edwards, around 10:30 a.m. Thursday after a several month marijuana cultivation investigation that began in Fresno County, Collins said.
Collins’ team of 18 detectives had been investigating Edwards, along with four other suspects for more than two months. The investigation included San Benito, Fresno, Monterey, Madera and Merced counties, Collins said.
Edwards’ property was the only site in San Benito County that was included in the team’s investigation.
Collins was unsure where the marijuana originally came from and if it was the lone cache of drugs that had been stored at the property.
“There might be more (somewhere else), or maybe it’s already hit the streets. We’ve got ideas, but we can’t prove it,” he said. “This is quite a bit, especially for being locally grown.”
The street value would have totaled about $300,000, he said.
Two guns were also found, a .45 magnum and a .45 automatic – one in the house and another in a truck, Detective Jake Jensen said. A couple more pounds of marijuana were also found inside the house.
Edwards was already in custody in Fresno at the time of the raid. He had been arrested while in court for another drug-related matter, Jensen said.
The drugs will now be booked into evidence and the next step is the trial process. If Edwards is convicted, he could face up to several years in prison for the possession, Collins said.
