Derek Achong

A 22-year-old uni­ver­si­ty dropout was re­leased on $150,000 bail af­ter ap­pear­ing in court yes­ter­day in re­la­tion to a raid on an in­door mar­i­jua­na-grow­ing farm in an apart­ment near the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' (UWI) St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus last week.

Matthew Soo-Chan, of San Diego Park, Diego Mar­tin, was not called up­on to plead to mar­i­jua­na cul­ti­va­tion and traf­fick­ing charges when he ap­peared be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Gillian David-Scot­land in the Tu­na­puna First Court yes­ter­day.

Mo­ments af­ter rat­i­fy­ing his bail bond at the Tu­na­puna Ad­min­is­tra­tive Com­plex, Soo-Chan, hid un­der a cus­tomised hood­ie and walked out in the com­pa­ny of his rel­a­tives.

There was re­port­ed­ly a scuf­fle be­tween a male rel­a­tive and me­dia per­son­nel, who at­tempt­ed to cap­ture his pho­to. The ex­change re­sult­ed in one pho­tog­ra­ph­er suf­fer­ing a gash to his fore­arm and an­oth­er's cam­era be­ing de­stroyed.

The par­ties were even­tu­al­ly re­strained be­fore the al­ter­ca­tion man­aged to erupt in­to a full scale brawl.

The in­ci­dent has since been re­port­ed to Tu­na­puna Po­lice who are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Soo-Chan, a for­mer busi­ness and in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy stu­dent, was ar­rest­ed in an apart­ment at Old Tim Street, St Au­gus­tine, hours af­ter the po­lice al­leged­ly found an il­le­gal farm at an­oth­er apart­ment one street away last Thurs­day.

Po­lice made the first raid around 7 am on Thurs­day when they searched an apart­ment at Be­dessie Street. When they en­tered they found the fur­ni­ture had been re­moved and re­placed with LED lamps and plant pots con­tain­ing high grade mar­i­jua­na plants.

An in­dus­tri­al air pu­rifi­ca­tion unit was be­ing used to con­ceal the smell pro­duced by the flow­er­ing plants.

The plants and the grow­ing equip­ment were brought to court for Soo-Chan's court ap­pear­ance.

In his ap­pli­ca­tion for bail his lawyer Lar­ry Williams raised con­cerns about the ev­i­dence against his client as po­lice pros­e­cu­tors ini­tial­ly said 70 mar­i­jua­na plants were seized but added 24 more to the fig­ure when the seized items were checked by David-Scot­land.

Williams al­so not­ed that Soo-Chan had a clean crim­i­nal record and re­cent­ly en­rolled in a pro­gramme at the T&T Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute (TTHTI) to ful­fill his dream of be­com­ing a chef.

Soo-Chan will reap­pear in court on Feb­ru­ary 13. (DA)