Five members of a longtime Santa Rosa pot-growing family won a bittersweet court victory Tuesday when a judge reversed their convictions because of an illegal search by sheriff’s deputies. Jim and Peggy Doolaege, along with their sons Justin and Ben, and daughter-in-law Lana, stood before Judge Gary Medvigy, who agreed with a state appeals court that the evidence against them was tainted. Without the barn full of evidence — marijuana seized in 2008 from Justin Doolaege’s rented Llano Road home — prosecutors could no longer proceed against them, Paul Payne reports in the Santa Rosa [...]
Oct 232010
On a hillside just east of Santa Rosa, a small band of artists cultivates marijuana plants and assembles artwork side by side. They claim the pot is grown legitimately for medicinal purposes and the proceeds are used to underwrite their nonprofit art organization. The 120-acre site near Hood Mountain is home to twin registered nonprofit organizations, American Medicinals and the Life Is Art Foundation, Dan Taylor reports in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. The property owners say they created American Medicinals, which grows medical marijuana for member patients, to support the nonprofit foundation Life Is [...]
SANTA ROSA — Police arrested two residents of a west Santa Rosa home who claimed armed robbers stole their marijuana Monday afternoon. Police responded around 12:30 p.m. Monday to a report of a home invasion robbery at 2315 Valley West Drive, the Contra Costa Times reports. Residents of the house reportedly were running through yards asking neighbors to call 911, police Sgt. Steve Fraga said. The residents told police three men, two of them with handguns, bound them with duct tape in their home during the robbery of an unknown number of pounds of marijuana, [...]
Oct 022010
Santa Rosa police said three men suspected of robbing a couple of their marijuana at gunpoint Friday were caught a short time later still in their silver Cadillac with pot in the car. Police said a handgun believed to have been used in the 1:20 p.m. confrontation outside a Santa Rosa Avenue Applebee’s restaurant was found dropped on the road a short distance from where the car was stopped. The alleged victims, a Lake County couple, said they were robbed in the Applebee’s parking lot by two men they’d met a few weeks earlier at [...]
Two men were injured during a Wednesday morning home invasion robbery at their northwest Santa Rosa home that police say was likely linked to cultivation of marijuana inside the residence. Police were notified of the incident at about 3:30 a.m. by a call from Sutter Santa Rosa Medical Center, where the two victims sought treatment for minor injuries, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reports. Police were told that one of the men had just returned from work when he was confronted by several armed suspects outside his Vermillion Way home in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park [...]
In his gray Donegal tweed cap, untucked dress shirt and jeans, Josh Clark hardly looks the part of a delivery man. Then again, he’s not coming to the door with pizza or Chinese food. On a warm afternoon last week, the 30-year-old Petaluma resident walked up to a modest single-story home in Santa Rosa’s Junior College neighborhood to deliver a white envelope with about an eighth of an ounce of marijuana to a man in his mid-70s with skin cancer and compressed discs. The delivery — worth about $45 — was a freebie for “someone [...]
At 4:20 p.m. this afternoon a certain pungent odor may arise along Humboldt Street in the Santa Rosa Junior College neighborhood. Marijuana will be smoldering in many other places, as well, at 4:20 on 4/20 — April 20 — a day embedded in popular culture, or at least pot culture, as a high time to get high. “Everybody knows 420,” said Nicholas Aranda, 19, a Santa Rosa resident who posted a weed-burning invitation last week on Craigslist. “Meet up at your local traffic circles & get high,” Aranda’s posting said, citing the “best areas” on [...]
Four armed robbers entered a Santa Rosa cannabis club Friday night and stole an undisclosed amount of marijuana, money and other items, the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office said. The robbery was first reported to Sheriff’s officials at 7:25 p.m., the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat reports. The operator of the club, on the 3400 block of Santa Rosa Avenue, was treated for injuries and later released. Sheriff’s detectives are assisting in the investigation and no other information is available at this time. (Bud’s note: While the first post from the Press-Democrat doesn’t name the dispensary involved, [...]
Mar 192010
A Santa Rosa man was arrested twice Wednesday night — first when he was pulled over for expired registration and police found pot and $55,000 in the car, and later when he bailed out of jail and came home to a squad of detectives raiding his house, where they seized drugs, a stolen handgun and other evidence, Rohnert Park police said. Early Thursday, Stephen Potter Elliott, 41, remained in the Sonoma County Jail, with bail of $25,000, the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat reports. His new charges included suspected possession of a controlled substance, possession of an [...]
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