[Sativa]

FORT SUMNER, N.M. (AP) — It was a trail of dried marijuana leaves that raised the Fort Sumner police chief's suspicions.

Chief Wayne Atchley followed the trail and discovered someone had broken into the department's evidence storage area on May 10.

Dried marijuana plants were taken from about 2,500 plants in the evidence storage area. There were no signs of forced entry into the building, and whoever took the marijuana got into the storage area by climbing over its wall through an open ceiling space, the chief said.

Atchley said the locks on the building, a former village armory, had not been changed for about five years.

Apparently whoever took the marijuana knew it was there because it was the only thing taken, he said.

Atchley asked state police to investigate "so nobody could come back and say it was a cover-up," he said.

State police spokesman Lt. Rick Anglada said investigators are not sure how much marijuana was taken because the department has not received a full inventory.

The marijuana was evidence from a 2005 Guadalupe County case in which no arrests were made, the chief said. Guadalupe County sheriff's deputies seized the plants from a field along the Pecos River.

The marijuana was held at the police department because the county's other evidence storage facility lacked space, Atchley said.

Atchley said he had been trying to get a destruction order for the drugs.



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Source: Las Cruces Sun
Contact: Las Cruces Sun-News
Copyright: 2007 Las Cruces Sun-News.
Website: Marijuana taken from Fort Sumner police evidence room