HOUSTON – Children may have been staying at a southwest Houston home where drug agents discovered a giant marijuana growing operation.
Drug agents donned hazmat suits as they dismantled the drug house in a neighborhood near the 9500 block of West Airport Road. Police detained 34-year-old Vinh Tan Nguyen, who sources say had a felony warrant for meth out of Fort Bend County.
"He never discussed what his profession was, but he was gone quite a bit," said neighbor Snowden Bennett.
He said it appeared Nguyen wasn't living alone.
"There was a little girl and a little boy. That's what the goal on the garage is about. He put that there for them and they would play basketball out there a lot of times in the afternoon," Bennett said.
The home's exterior was rigged with surveillance equipment. Inside, a source tells Local 2 agents seized 300 marijuana plants and roughly 100 pounds of hydroponic weed that was being grown in four rooms. They photographed and bagged it as evidence.
It took investigators a few hours to disassemble the network of lights, fans and water pumps used to grow the pot.
A CenterPoint Energy crew turned off the electricity to the home and Nguyen was taken to jail.
"He talked when we were out there, but other than that he never came in my home and never invited me into his," Bennett said.
Nguyen is facing a charge of felony possession of marijuana.