CANYON CITY – With the sentencing of a former Monument-area couple, authorities last week wrote the final chapter in a major marijuana case from 2006.

Aureliano Torres, 30, and Natasha Bettina Torres, 26, were sentenced in Grant County Circuit Court last Thursday, Jan. 7, on drug charges.

The case stems from a pair of high-profile marijuana busts in Grant County in July 2006, when federal, state and local officers raided plantations in the Burnt Corral Creek drainage and the China Creek area. They seized some 11,000 pot plants in the raids.

Three men were convicted on drug charges in 2008 in U.S. District Court in Eugene. At the time, police had warrants out for the Torres couple, who lived next to one of the plantation in the Monument area at the time of the raids. They had since moved to Washington state, but turned themselves in to authorities last April.

Last November, Aureliano Torres pleaded guilty through an Alford plea, which allows him to maintain his innocence while acknowledges that the evidence likely would convict him. Natasha Torres pleaded guilty in a negotiated deal with the state.

Last week, Judge William D. Cramer Jr. sentenced Aureliano Torres to 17 months in prison, with credit for time served, and three years postprison supervision, on a count of manufacture of marijuana. He was sentenced to 60 days concurrent on each of two counts of endangering the welfare of a minor. He also faces fines and fees of $1,891.

Natasha Torres was sentenced to three years supervised probation, and 30 days in jail with credit for time served on a charge of possession of marijuana. On two counts of endangering a minor, she received suspended sentences of 10 days in jail, concurrent with other sentences, and 40 hours of community service. Fines and fees totaled $2,589.

The couple have five children, one who is just 3 months old and has health issues. Because of the medical situation and the requirements of probation, Cramer opted not to suspend Natasha Torres’ driver’s license. The judge also said he thinks she will be successful in her probation and urged her not to place her children in such circumstances again.

“I hope it’s a lesson well learned,” he told her.

In the case of Aureliano Torres, District Attorney Ryan Joslin noted the circumstances of the drug case, and argued a defense suggestion for a treatment program.

“I don’t believe he’s indicated he has a drug problem,” Joslin said.

Joslin drew connections between materials found in the Torres home and the two drug plantations that were raided.

“In the home, there was approximately 132.9 grams of marijuana found,” Joslin said.

He noted that pot was found in a child’s backpack in a child’s room of the Torres house and in a bucket in the house. In addition, he said a large amount of PVC pipe, fertilizer bags, food labels, ammunition – all of the same type found in the plantations – were found in the Torres house and shed.

Defense attorney John Lamborn asked the judge to consider sending Torres directly to the immigration authorities, who already have a hold on him as an illegal alien.

Lamborn said Torres has professed no knowledge of “what went on up the hill.”

Torres, in a brief statement through an interpreter, said Joslin was saying “things that aren’t true, but that’s the way it goes.”

Cramer wasn’t persuaded.

“I don’t find it believable that you didn’t know what was going on behind your house, so close to where you lived,” the judge said. He also cited the PVC pipe as a strong evidence linking the house to the grow.

Joslin said Torres will be subject to deportation after his Oregon sentence is served.