DETROIT — When firefighters arrived to extinguish a house fire on Detroit’s west side, it wasn’t just burning wood they smelled, WJBK-TV reported Saturday.
“We smelled something, then we found it … some marijuana in the house,” said Battalion 4 Chief Randy Gibson. “Lots of marijuana.”
In a couple of upstairs bedrooms of the house on Pierson Street, firefighters stumbled upon a growing operation Friday of nearly 30 pot plants. Some were knee-high.
“You begin to smell some odd things,” Ken Keene, pastor of Life Challenge Ministries, told the television station.
Keene’s ministry is an outreach program housing men with alcohol or drug addiction. It’s also across the street from the burned house, and Keene said he has seen traffic going to and from the house at all hours of the day.
“It’s not completely surprising,” he said of marijuana being found there. “But that’s why we are in this community to help with issues like that.”
All of the marijuana was removed Friday and the drug case was turned over to Detroit police.
