3 Missing in Marijuana Spotter Plane
Two sheriff’s deputies and their pilot, missing for three days in a surveillance plane, might have met with foul play, worried Campaign Against Marijuana Planting officials said Saturday.
No progress was reported in the search for the Cessna 182, missing in the remote Klamath River Canyon area since Thursday.
The air search over about 2,000 square miles of heavily forested, rugged wilderness ended at dusk, turning up no clues to the disappearance, and was to resume at first light Sunday, a Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher said.
The missing men were identified as pilot Noah Stennitt of Redding, on his third annual Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) mission in Northern California, and deputies Dale Rossetto, 30, and Larry Breceda, 29.
The plane took off about 10 a.m. Thursday from an airstrip in Montague, seven miles east of Yreka. A routine four-hour surveillance mission was planned.
CAMP director Jack Beecham feared the plane may have been shot down by an irate marijuana farmer. Angry growers had taken pot-shots at CAMP aircraft at least twice previously, Beecham said, but he noted that CAMP planes generally fly at 2,000 feet.
“It’s very difficult to hit an aircraft at that altitude,” Beecham said.
Beecham said the ground raids on pot farms would start Monday as scheduled whether or not the aircraft was found.
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