Marijuana mystery on Michigan Avenue solved

The mystery surrounding a Michigan Avenue marijuana grow house has been solved.

And a Falls man has been charged with running the pot farm that was found there in July.

Roving Anti-Crime Unit officers arrested Thomas Young, 54, 2212 Michigan Ave., late last week and charged him with growing marijuana without a license and criminal possession of marijuana. The arrest followed a lengthy investigation that was triggered by a call of a burglary in progress at Young’s home on July 30.

Patrol officers responded to the call after neighbors called 911 and said they’d seen a suspicious man leaving the home with a backpack. The neighbors thought the man had broken into the home.

When the officers arrived on the scene, the suspect was nowhere to be found, but they did notice something that seemed out of the ordinary. Officers said they noticed an overpowering odor of pot coming from the home.

“You could smell it coming from the upper floor (of the house), all the way out to the sidewalk,” Falls Police Narcotics Division Detective Tom Rodriguez said at the time.

Inside the home, officers found a substantial marijuana grow operation, complete with high powered lamps, sophisticated fertilizing and watering systems and an extensive ventilation system. The operation occupied two rooms in the basement of the home and the attic.

Police seized almost 60 plants, in various stages of development. They also found a tote containing recently harvested pot as well as a quantity of marijuana being dried on clothes lines.

“There was pot all over the place,” Rodriguez said.

Investigators identified Young as the occupant of the home and questioned him about the marijuana being cultivated there. Young told detectives he didn’t know anything about it.

He told investigators “a roommate had instigated the grow op” and that was all he knew about it.