Pot Farm Raided in Thousand Oaks

Authorities on Friday arrested an armed man and confiscated nearly 800 pounds of marijuana plants being cultivated in a heavily wooded ravine on public property in western Thousand Oaks.

Servondo Villa, 22, was arrested as dozens of law enforcement officers raided the one-acre marijuana field shortly before 8 a.m., said Ventura County sheriff’s spokesman Eric Nishimoto. A second suspect may have escaped, he said.

“It’s hard to nab these guys,” Nishimoto said. “They know all the ways out. They’re pretty sneaky, pretty weaselly.”

Villa, a resident of Los Angeles County, was booked on suspicion of illegal cultivation of marijuana and being armed during commission of a felony. He remained in custody at the Ventura County Jail in lieu of $90,000 bail.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Bret Uhlich said the department’s narcotics unit had spent two months coordinating the raid and monitoring the location, where 760 plants were found during a 2003 raid. The high-grade sinsemilla marijuana being grown this season had an estimated street value of up to $2.4 million, he said.

The marijuana, planted along both sides of a natural stream on property managed by the Conejo Open Space Conservation Agency, was spotted by the Sheriff’s Department’s helicopter unit during a routine inspection.

Uhlich said that during the April-to-October growing season such large pot fields are more often found in remote portions of the Los Padres National Forest in northern Ventura County.

The marijuana field’s caretakers had set up a makeshift camp on flat ground overlooking a small waterfall, authorities said. Their weathered tent had two sleeping bags, and the area was littered with supplies.

Along with a propane tank and a car battery rigged to serve as a charger for cellphones, there were discarded fertilizer bags and a canister with a pump handle for applying weed killer, authorities said.

This first major pot raid of the year in Ventura County was coordinated by the Sheriff’s Department. The raid included personnel from the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, Oxnard police and a park ranger for the open space agency.

After deputies and federal agents spent nearly two hours cutting down the 5- to 6-foot-tall plants, they stacked the piles on large nets, which were later lifted by the sheriff’s helicopter and taken to a nearby staging area. The marijuana was then trucked to the landfill in Simi Valley to be buried, according to Nishimoto.