L.A. County sheriff's deputies seized 31 bales of marijuana weighing about 1,500 pounds on Catalina Island, authorities said Wednesday. Officials said island deputies became suspicious Tuesday when they spotted a man with plastic-wrapped bales during a routine patrol near a small beach at Little Harbor.
A Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department aircraft then dropped SWAT team members down to the site, arresting the man and seizing the marijuana, officials said. About $750,000 worth of pot was flown back to the mainland, they said.
The bust comes on the heels of Sheriff's Department officials discovering what they said was more than $4.5 million worth of marijuana in two unrelated busts in the San Gabriel Valley. In one, officials said, deputies found about 1,900 marijuana plants, valued at about $2 million, growing in rows under bright lamps in the unincorporated community of Bassett.
