$4-Million Street Value : Three Arrested in Seizure of Two Tons of Marijuana

Three men were arrested after federal and city narcotics agents late Friday seized nearly two tons of marijuana with a street value estimated at $4 million.

Mark Scherer, 34, and Dave Wollert, 32, both of New Mexico, and Bruce Eickelberg, 34, of San Diego, were booked into the Metropolitan Correctional Center on suspicion of possession and conspiracy to distribute marijuana.

Sgt. Dennis Sesma, head of the San Diego police narcotics “street team,” said police received an anonymous tip from someone who claimed he “smelled bulk quantities of marijuana” in an area of north San Diego off Carmel Valley Road. Officers found the area to be a “maze of dirt roads,” he said.

Sesma said that officers saw a 1985 four-wheel-drive truck with New Mexico license plates pulling a 12-foot trailer. The truck drove up to a row of Quonset huts in the 5200 block of Shaw Ridge Road, where an unidentified driver loaded bales of marijuana into the back of his vehicle.

Police, joined by federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents, followed the truck to Encinitas Boulevard in Encinitas, where the driver stopped, placed the keys on the tailgate and walked away, Sesma said.

Scherer and Wollert then got in the truck and drove off, Sesma said, and were stopped within a few minutes by police, who had a specially trained dog sniff the vehicle for drugs.

“The dog went crazy,” Sesma said.

Sesma said police had to make unusual arrangements to search the vehicle. While they detained the men, officers set up a three-way telephone conference call at 9:45 p.m. among a deputy district attorney and a judge to get approval to search the truck and trailer. Officers found about 3,600 pounds of marijuana bound in 35-pound bales stuffed in the trailer.

Narcotics agents then returned to the Quonset huts and arrested Eickelberg, who rented the building and lived in a nearby house. Another telephone conference yielded a second search warrant at 2 a.m. Saturday. The search turned up a small amount of narcotics and several thousand dollars in the house and hut, said Sesma.

Police estimated the street value of the seized marijuana at $4 million. Sesma said officers believed it came from Mexico and was bound for New Mexico.

Sesma also said the seizure was the largest amount of marijuana taken by the 11-agent street team, which was established in 1981 and receives federal funds.