CAMARILLO : Police Find Indoor Pot Crop, Arrest 2

Two Camarillo residents were being held Tuesday in Ventura County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail after being arrested on suspicion of possessing marijuana for sale.

Mark A. Kueffner, 35, and Rosemary Hemm, 36, were arrested Monday at their Camarillo home by narcotics officers from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, California Highway Patrol and Santa Paula Police Department after a one-month investigation, Sheriff’s Lt. Gary Backman said.

Backman said the Sheriff’s Department received information that marijuana was being grown indoors at the Camarillo home. Armed with a search warrant, officers found 280 marijuana plants, ranging in height from seedlings to four feet, growing in the garage, Backman said. The area was kept humid, and large halide lights were found on adjustable tracks and timers.

Police also found about a pound of packaged marijuana. They estimate that at maturity, each of the 280 plants would have been capable of producing a pound of marijuana.

Kueffner and Hemm were arrested without incident, Backman said. Upon Kueffner’s arrest, police discovered that he had been wanted in San Bernardino County since 1986 on suspicion of cultivating marijuana in that county.