Boy Scout Still Missing; Searchers Find Marijuana Crop

After an eighth day of searching on Saturday, rescuers still had not found a 12-year-old Boy Scout who disappeared while on a hike with his troop in the San Bernardino Mountains.

An additional 130 volunteers showed up to aid the effort on Saturday, bringing to 270 the number of people combing a 45-square-mile area of the San Bernardino National Forest for signs of Jared Negrete, the El Monte youth who became separated from his troop on July 19.

Officials have escalated the air search and were using five helicopters on Saturday, including three from the U.S military. They said the search would continue today and there was a good possibility the child was still alive.

Jared was on a hike with five other Boy Scouts and a leader from a troop sponsored by a Mormon church. He had no food or water with him, but rescuers have said there is sufficient water in the mountains and fish in some creeks that the child might be able to catch.

Meanwhile, volunteers searching for the boy stumbled upon a field of marijuana plants fed by a sophisticated irrigation system.

The volunteers “backed out immediately” and called authorities when they encountered the irrigation system, said a narcotics investigator from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department who declined to give his name.

“Somebody’s going to be real mad,” the investigator said. He said the department had received a tip a month ago about a marijuana field in the area, but had been unable to find it.

On Saturday, narcotics investigators hiked in and found a 100-foot-by-100-foot clearing from which thick vegetation had been hacked away 6,200 feet up the side of Mt. San Gorgonio. An irrigation system that included at least 500 feet of half-inch pipe and automatic timers had been installed, investigators said. Whoever planted the field also had carefully left a canopy of trees that allowed in just the right amount of sunlight for marijuana cultivation, investigators said.

Sheriff’s deputies seized 7,169 marijuana plants with a street value of more than $100,000, investigators said.

Bill Lenew, a spokesman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, said the marijuana was scheduled to be burned Saturday evening at the U.S. Forest Service station at the bottom of Mt. San Gorgonio.