McLean

An information charged defendant with possession of heroin (§ 11500, Health & Saf. Code), and alleged one prior felony conviction. His motion to suppress evidence under section 1538.5, Penal Code, was heard before the trial of the cause. One witness, Officer Michael Davis, testified. The trial court found as a matter of law that the evidence was unlawfully seized, granted the motion and dismissed the case on its own motion pursuant to section 1385, Penal Code. The People appeal from the order granting the motion and dismissing the case.

Around the first of March, 1969, Officer Davis and his partner were summoned to the Stop-and-Go Market to take an armed robbery report; Mrs. Beckner, a clerk, had been robbed. In the course of her conversation regarding the robbery, Mrs. Beckner mentioned to the officers that “There is an individual who comes—there is a man that comes into this store daily and he’s very—he dresses sort of funny. He buys a lot of balloons and I do believe that the man is packaging some kind of narcotics. ... He lives across the lot in the apartments”; that every day this man buys anywhere from one to three packages of balloons—there are six to eight…