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Snacks lead to discovery

Kevin Koontz
Police uncover huge marijuana grow operation

PENN TWP — What started out as a routine call for shoplifting — the theft of $3 worth of snacks — quickly turned into the investigation of an elaborate indoor marijuana growing operation.

The scope and sophistication of the operation on Dodds Road stunned — and impressed — police.

“It was a significant grow room,” said Penn Township Patrolman Steve Setnar. “It couldn't have been put together better.”

The accidental discovery led to the arrest Thursday of 43-year-old Kevin Koontz of Mars, who is in the Butler County Prison on $50,000 bail.

Police said they also charged Koontz's girlfriend, Margo V. Barr, 39, of Penn Township, today in connection with the grow-op. She, too, is in the county jail.

Setnar was on duty Oct. 9 when he got a call shortly before 7 p.m. for a pair of shoplifters who had driven away after snatching food items at a convenience store on Route 8.

A clerk at the store passed on to police the license plate of the getaway car. Soon after, Setnar found Koontz and Barr at a house in the 600 block of Dodds Road.

Koontz owns the home with his uncle. Barr lives there and Koontz splits his time there and at his uncle's home in Mars, investigators said.

Even before the defendants could answer the door, the seemingly petty call took an unexpected turn.

Through the home's front window, Setnar noticed “green leafy material,” his report noted, scattered on top of a pool table and a glass table.

“It sure looked like marijuana,” he recounted Thursday.

He spoke to the couple inside. After an initial denial, both acknowledged swiping a couple marshmallow and chocolate treats at the store. They offered to pay Setnar for the items.But, he informed them, the stolen snacks could be the least of their problems. The officer's primary focus had shifted to the suspected marijuana.A consent search soon turned up numerous empty stamp bags of heroin, syringes, smoking pipes, a digital scale and additional “large amounts of marijuana” in an upstairs bedroom, according to court documents.“Koontz and Barr admitted to having problems with drug use and stated that they were trying to get clean,” a police affidavit said.The search eventually moved outside where Setnar noticed a detached two-stall garage that had all the windows covered up and a steel man door with commercial locks.“This garage was buttoned up,” Setnar recalled.Around the garage, he noticed 5-gallon buckets filled with potting soil. He saw empty bags of Miracle-Gro.The findings prompted Setnar to get a search warrant. He suspected he might find a possible marijuana grow operation — but not as big as it turned out.“Whoever did this built it strictly to grow marijuana,” he said.The large grow room inside contained 22 individual 1,000 watt grow lights, mimicking the sun's rays for 12 to 18 hours a day.Each 3-foot-by-4-foot high-intensity light drew power from its own electrical ballast and each was rigged with its own cooling system, Setnar said.“And everything was on a timer,” he added. The timers powered the lights and pumps that were connected to a fertilizing and watering system.The grow room had dehumidifiers to pull moisture from the air to prevent mildew, and ceiling-mounted turbo fans to keep the plants cool and charcoal air filters to help minimize the operation's foul odor.“The operation was well thought through,” Setnar said. The layout was purpose driven — to grow a lot of marijuana.“The electrical system was put in specifically for this grow room,” he said. “The heating and air conditioning were put together for this grow room.“The movement of the air and filters were put together for this grow room. The cooling system for these lights were put together for this grow room.”The operation apparently succeeded.“There was marijuana everywhere,” Setnar said. “Everywhere you looked. It was everywhere.”Police seized 68 marijuana plants, primarily 2 to 3 feet tall. But most of the marijuana they found consisted of leaves stuffed into garbage bag after garbage bag.Koontz and Barr, meanwhile, evidently are offering police a simple defense of the findings.“They claim it was not theirs,” Setnar said. “They claim they had nothing to do with it. They claim they had no knowledge of it.”Koontz posited that the illicit property belonged to a tenant who was leasing the garage.But, Setnar noted, Koontz was unable to provide investigators with the name, address, workplace or any other personal information of the supposed lessee.Police continued their investigation before arresting Koontz on charges of manufacturing and possessing with intent to deliver a controlled substance, and conspiracy.District Judge Lewis Stoughton arraigned him on those felony charges and other misdemeanor drug charges as well as the shoplifting charge.Police also Thursday picked up Barr on an unrelated arrest warrant for allegedly forging a Saxonburg woman's check last month. They subsequently charged her today with her role in the alleged marijuana grow operation.

Margo Barr

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