FORT SUMNER, New Mexico (STPNS) -- The New Mexico State Police said Tuesday they have no new information concerning a break-in at the Fort Sumner Police Department May 10.

Approximately 2,500 marijuana plants seized in a 2005 Guadalupe County Sheriff?s Department raid on a pot plantation were stolen during the break-in. The plants, recovered from a site along the Pecos River, were wrapped in bundles of 100 plants each.

Suspicions that the theft may have been an ?inside job? continue since there was no sign of forced entry to the facility, which formerly housed Fort Sumner?s Army National Guard unit.



A State Police crime scene investigation team worked the case, but results of forensic tests are not completed, State Police Sgt. E.J. Fouratt told the De Baca County News Tuesday. The officer in charge of the case, Agent Joshua Armijo, was in Santa Fe to testify in a trial and was unavailable for comment.

Fort Sumner Police Chief Wayne Atchley discovered the break-in about 9 a.m. on May 10. He said he noticed dried leaves on the floor of the building and noticed a trail of leaves leading up the stairs to a storage area.

He said there was no sign of forced entry and he immediately called the State Police to handle the investigation.

Atchley said the marijuana was stored in an area on the second floor of the building, behind a locked door. A small space above the top of the wall was used to gain entry into the storage area. Atchley said the pot was stored in the second-floor area because it was too large to place in the facility?s evidence vault and too large for the storage facilities in the Guadalupe Sheriff?s Department. Atchley added that the vault was not comprised and all evidence from other cases was intact.

Atchley told the De Baca County News that it was ironic that the pot was stolen the day after he had ordered new locks for the doors on the building. The new locks are now in place and policies have been implemented for the control of keys.

Prior to the break-in, there was no accurate count of keys to the building and the number of keys that had been issued, Atchley said. The building had been occupied by a couple of different governmental testing groups, as well as the Fort Sumner Police and the New Mexico State Police over a period of four to five years without locks being changed.