Pot grow found in homes where 8 died
Hundreds of plants were at the Ohio properties.
columbus, ohio» Four days after the calculated killings of eight people in rural Ohio, a prosecutor revealed Monday that marijuana was found at some of the crime scenes, including a grow-house sheltering hundreds of plants.
“It wasn’t just somebody sitting pots in the window,” Pike County Prosecutor Rob Junk told The Columbus Dispatch.
The victims, all members of an extended family, were fatally shot in the head, including a young mother whose newborn baby was sleeping beside her Friday morning. That baby, another infant and a toddler were spared.
The victims were remembered Monday as loyal and caring people. More than a dozen counselors, clergy and psychologists arrived at the local high school to help friends and neighbors handle their grief.
Dana Rhoden, who was killed along with her three children, her ex-husband, and three other relatives, “always wanted what was best for her kids,” Scioto Valley Local School District Superintendent Todd Burkitt said Monday.
The youngest victim, Christopher Rhoden Jr., was a 16-year-old freshman at Piketon High School, which has 530 students.
All eight autopsies have been completed. Although authorities have released no details about a motive, the attorney general’s office did confirm Monday that one of the victims had received a threat via Facebook.
Junk did not respond to requests from The Associated Press for comment.
At a news conference on Sunday, Attorney General Mike DeWine called the killings “a sophisticated operation,” and Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said citizens should assume that those responsible are armed and dangerous.
Extensive marijuanagrowing operations are not uncommon in rural southern Ohio, an economically distressed corner of Appalachia. Two of the four homes that became crime scenes Friday are within walking distance of each other along a remote, winding road leading into wooded hills from a rural highway. The others are nearby.