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LEGAL GROWERS BECOME INVITING TARGET

Smoking marijuana can be hazardous to your health, but the effects are insidious and long term.  When it comes to growing marijuana, legally or not, the risks are more dramatic and immediate.

On the street, marijuana brings between $1,500 and $4,000, depending on its quality and potency.  And the buyer doesn't care whether the seller grew it himself or robbed a legal grower licensed under Oregon's medical marijuana program.

At least two Yamhill County growers learned that the hard way.

After the barn where he was legally growing pot got hit twice, Ernest Holter installed an electronic alarm system.  When it went off in January 2005, he rushed out to confront the intruder.

Big mistake.  The intruder punched him in the face so hard and often that Holter suffered a broken nose, two shattered eye sockets and a dented and lacerated skull, leaving him unconscious.

Things turned out even worse for Michael Castilleja, who was growing medical marijuana in his greenhouse when armed intruders paid him a visit in October 2002.

Then serving as a patrol deputy, Sheriff's Sgt.  Chris Ray, who heads the Yamhill County Interagency Narcotics Team, handled the case.  And he recalls it vividly.

When Ray showed up, he found a naked Castilleja bleeding from five bullet wounds.

The unlucky pot grower had taken slugs to the buttocks, scrotum, chest and left arm.  They had tumbled through his diaphragm, spleen, abdomen, small intestine, large intestine and left lung.

According to the police report, Castilleja had gone outside to have a cigarette when he heard voices coming from his adjacent greenhouse.  He discovered two men stealing marijuana he smoked to treat knee and back pain, and they shot him.