People v. Zhu CA3

BACKGROUND

On March 31, 2022, David Granillo, a troubleshooter for PG&E, received a call that flames were shooting out of an electrical splice box in a Stockton neighborhood. Granillo determined that the fire was caused by an electrical overload and traced the problem to defendant’s house, where a bypass had been installed to obtain power before the PG&E meter. Granillo cut the power to defendant’s house. When defendant arrived at the house, Granillo followed him into the garage and found that cables from a subpanel were hooked up to grow lights, timers, fans, air conditioners, and water pumps. Detective Matthew Felber from the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department’s narcotics task force was dispatched to defendant’s house. Inside, he observed large trash bags filled with marijuana plant stems. Upstairs he found marijuana grow rooms with thousand-watt grow lights, filters, and oscillating fans attached to the walls. The detective counted 446 pots in the house used to grow marijuana. Based on the set up of the house and the potential marijuana yield, Felber opined that the purpose of the house was to cultivate and possess marijuana plants for sale and distribution. Brandon Roux,…