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NSBNews.net file photo of Oak Hill Mayor Mary Lee Cook
OAK HILL -- Mayor Mary Lee Cook wasted no time at tonight's meeting acknowledging Volusia County Sheriff's deputies confiscated marijuana plants on her property, but denied ownership and added she was set up by someone out to embarrass her.
"There would be criminal charges and I'd have to resign," the Oak Hill mayor said, declining to identify who her nemesis might be.
"They knew thay had an ace in the hole to force me to resign," she said, reading from a prepared statement at the beginning of the Monday commission meeting. "I'm fed up with this."
Cook claimed there were half dozen or so sickly-looking marijuana plants on her property and that the deputies destroyed them and told her they received an anonymous tip that the mayor was growing pot.
NSBNews.net checked into this allegation prior to tonight's meeting with Volusia Sheriff's spokesman Gary Davidson.
Deputies assigned to the East Volusia Narcotics Task Force showed up at the 84-year-old mayor's house on June 6, indicating to her that they received a tip that marijuana plants were being grown there, Davidson said.
Cook's son, David Brown, walked the property with deputies, who spotted the plants and confiscated them, Davidson said.
Because of Cook's age, she is not considered a suspect, though the case remains under investigation.
After the commission meeting, Cook told NSBNews.net she suspects someone connected to the police department may be involved, though she stopped short of blaming embattled Police Chief Diane Young directly.
NSBNews.net spoke with Young immediately after tonight's meeting and she denied any wrongdoing by herself or her department, but otherwise had no further comment.
Young was promoted to police chief a little more than a year ago, despite her admission that she snorted cocaine 100 times and smoked pot during the mid 1980s.