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Abel Mariot, 30, and Arnold F. Salcedo, 49, are named in a nine-count indictment returned by a grand jury in Hackensack earlier this week that accuses them with direct involvement in the Pine Street operation with Francisco J. Henao-Botero (above, left) and Salcedo’s girlfriend, Vicenta Encarnacio (above, right).
A fifth defendant, 49-year-old Ana M. Brito, is charged with trying to help them avoid arrest.
Salcedo and Encarnacion are also charged with endangering their 7-year-old child.
Hackensack police raided the home just after midnight Dec. 23 and seized more than 50 marijuana plants along with the growing equipment after city firefighters responding to a stove fire discovered the operation (SEE: Hackensack marijuana growing operation had lighting, irrigation, more, police director says).
The Pine Street residence “was wired with grow lights, had an irrigation system and had several pallets of fertilizer,” City Police Director Michael Mordaga told CLIFFVIEW PILOT shortly after the raid. “It was a major operation.”
The flash fire was quickly extinguished around 5:30 p.m.
This week’s indictment charges all but Brito with three counts of operating a fortified drug production facility and two of possessing the marijuana with the intent to distribute it on or near school property (The Fairmount School on Grand Avenue).
It charges Encarnacio and Henao-Botero with lying to narcotics investigators “to hinder [their] own apprehension, detection, punishment or conviction” and Brito with lying to help them avoid discovery.
Henao-Botero, a 54-year-old Colombian national, remained free on $75,000 bail, posted Feb. 26. Encarnacio, 39, remained free on $80,000 bail posted nearly three weeks earlier.
Both had their bails slashed — Botero from $750,000 and Encarnacio from $500,000.
The others were released pending further court action.
MUGSHOTS: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY SHERIFF
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