marijuana

A joint investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office’s Special Investigations Unit ended with the seizure of 117 marijuana plants Wednesday night and the arrest of a Julington Creek Plantation resident.

Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Chuck Mulligan says a month-long investigation lead officers to a home in the 200 block of Hawthorn Hedge Lane, the site of the growing operation. Officers reported they could smell a distinct odor of marijuana coming from the house as they approached, and that when they contacted the resident, Pinto Nelson Duque, 34, he admitted he was growing marijuana.

Duque was arrested and charged with Cultivation of Marijuana and taken to the St. Johns County Jail.

Mulligan says the seized drugs have an estimated value of $117,000, and that investigators also seized $5,000 worth of chemicals, fertilizers and growing equipment.

Indoor pot cultivation is on the increase, Mulligan said, because better enforcement and improved investigative techniques are driving pot growers indoors. He cites the use of law enforcement aircraft and coordination with the FDLE and the Florida National Guard as a major factor in the reduction of outdoor marijuana cultivation.