Police find 301 pot plants in Raleigh

By SARAH OVASKA, Staff Writer

RALEIGH -- Nothing appeared to be unusual about the red brick house at 3508 
Fairhill Drive, on a tree-lined street in a quiet West Raleigh neighborhood.
The lawn was mowed. Neighbors occasionally saw cars drive up to the house 
with its black shutters.

Inside, however, law enforcement agents say they found 301 marijuana plants 
growing in the basement. Heat lamps provided warmth and artificial sunlight 
while fans and an odor eliminator hummed to maintain ideal growing 
conditions, according to a returned search warrant.

The rest of the house was empty, said Chief Lew Nuckles of Wake County 
Alcohol Beverage Control Law Enforcement, the agency in charge of 
Wednesday's drug seizure.

"No furniture, no clothing -- nothing in it," Nuckles said.

The 301 plants seized Wednesday amounted to 54.5 pounds of marijuana, 
Nuckles said. It's the largest haul of indoor-grown pot Nuckles has seen in 
his 17 years in law enforcement.

No one has been charged in connection with the seizure, but Nuckles said he 
would be seeking charges next week against Roger Lawrence Wilson, 25, who 
opened an electricity account for the home in January, and Jason Nikouyeh, 
23. Police think the two lived together in a separate townhouse on Queen 
Anne's Drive off Lynn Road.

Neither man could be reached for comment. ABC agents think the two rented 
the Fairhill Drive house, which is owned by Michael Schenck III and has a 
tax value of $222,500.

Deborah Ruggero, who lives next door, had wanted to meet her neighbors. "I 
never made it over there, and I felt bad about it," Ruggero said Thursday. 
"But now I don't."

With an estimated street value of $300 to $400 an ounce for the high-quality 
marijuana, the seizure was valued at between $261,000 and $348,000, Nuckles 
said.

An ounce of marijuana fills up half of a plastic sandwich bag, Nuckles said. 
More than 870 ounces was seized.

Commonly called kindbud, dank or red hairs, the marijuana seized was a 
superior product with an abundance of buds, Nuckles said. The buds have a 
high density of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the active agent that brings on 
the high linked with marijuana.

"It's nothing but bud," Nuckles said about the contraband.

A bud the size of a marble is generally smoked through a pipe, as opposed to 
joints traditionally used for lower-quality marijuana imported from Mexico 
or South America, Nuckles said.

Marijuana shipped in from points south sells for $125 or $150 an ounce and 
has a lower THC concentration, Nuckles said.

The Wake County ABC, funded through sales of liquor and spirits at ABC 
stores, began targeting growers of indoor marijuana a year and a half ago, 
Nuckles said.

Agents who worked enforcing liquor laws at local bars began noticing that 
recreational amounts of marijuana found on bar patrons were of a higher 
quality than the imported pot traditionally found in the Raleigh area, 
Nuckles said.

Wake County ABC agents discovered Progress Energy records that showed the 
Fairhill Drive house was using an average of 4,558 kilowatt hours each 
month, according to the search warrants. Similar-sized brick houses in the 
area use an average of 617 to 831 kilowatt hours each month.

Suspecting that the high electricity usage might be for heat lamps, agents 
began surveillance in late May and saw one person routinely stop by for 
five-minute periods, the search warrant states.

A week ago, Superior Court Judge Kenneth C. Titus issued a thermal imagery 
search warrant, which allowed Officer Wes Nipper to take pictures that 
showed heat emitted from the basement, according to the search warrant.

In a separate search of a Queen Anne's Drive townhouse shared by Wilson and 
Nikouyeh, police found smoking pipes and bongs along with two books about 
growing marijuana.

One of the books was penned by Ed Rosenthal, who wrote an "Ask Ed" column 
for more than 20 years in magazines catering to pot smokers. A bookshelf at 
the Wake County ABC office has half-a-dozen of Rosenthal's books, Nuckles 
said.

Agents once seized a highlighted copy of Rosenthal's book advising would-be 
growers how to avoid getting caught.

Staff writer Sarah Ovaska can be reached at 829-4622 or 
sovaska@newsobserver.com.