Itasca County authorities executed a search warrant Thursday and harvested a dump truck full of marijuana plants from the property of a 79-year-old rural Grand Rapids man.
Itasca County Sheriff Pat Medure said his office had been working on the case for about two years and gathered enough information for a judge to issue a search warrant for the property.
Sheriff's deputies and Grand Rapids police officers seized 877 marijuana plants from the suspect's nearly 40-acre property in Harris Township, five miles south of Grand Rapids.
The plants ranged in height from 3 to 6 feet tall and were a month to five weeks from being harvested. They were planted around the property and were ``well-manicured and well-attended to,' Medure said.
The sheriff estimated that had the marijuana been processed it would have had a street value of between $650,000 and $750,000.
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Medure expects to forward his office's reports to the Itasca County attorney's office for charges next week.
The man suspected of growing the plants has no prior criminal record and was not taken into custody. Medure said the man admitted his wrongdoing. He said the man lives alone, is not a threat to public safety and has ties to the community.
``He was very cooperative with us,' Medure said. ``He worked with us, he helped us pull the plants, he helped us load them in the dump truck.'
