Police arrested a man suspected of killing four Chinese nationals, “execution style,” over the weekend at a marijuana farm in Hennessey, Oklahoma.
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said authorities arrested 45-year-old Wu Chen in Miami Beach, Florida at around 4 pm on Tuesday, November 22, after a police car tag reader flagged his vehicle down.
Chen’s arrest was without incident, and the police took him to a detention center where he is waiting for extradition to Oklahoma, where he will face criminal charges, including murder and shooting with the intention of killing.
The Bureau said in an earlier statement that the murder victims in the marijuana farm included three men and one woman. Although the agency did not identify the deceased, it said they were all Chinese nationals.
The fatal incident, which took place at a sprawling 10-acre marijuana farm in a rural part of Oklahoma, also left a fifth person, also a Chinese national, injured.
The police said that Chen entered one of the buildings on the farm at around 5:45 pm and remained in the company of other employees for some time before the shooting began.
Authorities got a 911 call about a hostage situation on the farm around two hours after the shooting started. When Sheriff’s deputies got there, they found four dead bodies.
Even though the Bureau did not say how the four murder victims died, they determined that the murders were not random. They said that they were targeted attacks that stemmed from an internal dispute.
Dennis Banther, Kingfisher County Sheriff, told the Kingfisher Times & Free Press that the five victims and the suspect have ties to the farm and knew each other.
On Monday, armed agents searched for the suspect on the property using drones and a helicopter. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol, Life EMS, Air Evac Lifeteam, Hennessey Fire Department, and a medical examiner were on the property which contains over 80 greenhouses.
On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs announced they were investigating the validity of the medical marijuana license obtained by the farm.
The 10-acre property was put on the market earlier this year for a million dollars and described as having 5,000 square feet of space and 50 hoop houses or temporary greenhouses.
Since 2018, when Oklahoma legalized medical marijuana, over 10,000 businesses have obtained licenses, and about one in every ten residents has a permit to buy the product.
Oklahoma Governor, Kevin Stitt signed a bill in May blocking any new marijuana dispensaries and stopping all processing of licenses. He signed the bill after lawmakers argued that foreign and out-of-state growers saturated the commercial sale of marijuana and exploited the state requirements and Oklahoma’s limited law enforcement.
Although it is currently unclear what will happen to the “grow operation” where the murders occurred, law enforcement has reportedly seen a spike in human trafficking victims brought in to develop and trim marijuana sold in dispensaries.
Oklahoma legalized medical marijuana in 2018, and next year, Oklahoma voters will decide whether to legalize recreational use of the drug.
