Becky Whitacre of La Porte, Ind., can't figure out why someone would dump on her property 100 to 200 fully grown marijuana plants.
"I thought it was pretty strange to dump all of that. To me, you would take them home," said Whitacre, owner of Small's Landscaping.
She and her sister, Nancy, own a 200-acre growing operation just north of La Porte where the illegal plants were dumped. The entire marijuana crop was fully budded and some of the plants stood over 11 feet tall. Police said the estimated street value was more than $100,000.
"We're not sure why they were dumped there," La Porte County Sheriff's Department Chief of Detectives John Boyd said.
An employee of the landscaping company, Hugo Garcia, on Tuesday was at the 200-acre site on Fail Road near County Road 300 North where most of the plants for the business are grown. Garcia told police he was there to do some maintenance work and discovered tire tracks leading away from a gravel road.
Suspicious, he followed the tracks for about 50 yards and came across the pile of mature plants that appeared as if they were recently pulled out of the soil, police said.
"Somebody had dumped them out," Whitacre said.
Police did not know who grew the plants or where the plants were grown. Boyd speculated the crop might have been abandoned by a grower who was spooked or, perhaps, somebody was trying to get even.
"There are a number of possibilities. We are not certain," Boyd said, adding that most likely the plants were grown outdoors.
"When you're talking nearly 12 feet high that would be very difficult to grow in most indoor controlled environments," Boyd said.
He said the plants were soaked in diesel fuel and burned at an undisclosed location.