Publisher’s note: This story originally appeared in the Tuesday, May 4, 2010 edition of the Lassen County Times.
A pair of armed marijuana growers arrested last June after a gun battle with law enforcement officers in the Dixie Valley left one grower dead and two Lassen County Sheriff’s deputies injured face sentences of 15 years to life and more than $4 million in fines.
United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced that on Friday, April 23, a federal jury in Sacramento convicted defendants Jose Alfredo Zepeda, 20, of East Palo Alto, and Clemente Ferrias Arroyo, 63, of Morgan Hill, of conspiring to manufacture at least 1,000 marijuana plants, manufacturing at least 1,000 marijuana plants and possession of a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking crimes…