A trooper from the Missouri State Highway Patrol was flying a plane on a sunny July Sunday around lunchtime when he spotted something suspicious on the ground below.

According to court documents, the trooper saw some marijuana plants growing in a garden outside a rural Greene County home.

About 20 minutes later, two troopers showed up to the home and knocked on the front door, then the back door.

When no one answered, one of the troopers waited at the end of the driveway for more than two hours until a woman and her 37-year-old son arrived.

MORE:How the Missouri State Highway Patrol uses planes to stop speeders — and more

The trooper explained to them that a highway patrol pilot had spotted marijuana plants in the garden, court documents say, and asked them if they had any knowledge of the plants.

The 37-year-old man looked toward the ground and said the plants belonged to him, documents say, and turned over a plastic bag containing marijuana and rolling papers from his pockets.

According to court documents, the man walked the trooper to the garden and showed him two marijuana plants.

The man said he intended to use the marijuana for himself and had no intention of selling them.

The trooper arrested him and took him to the Greene County Jail where he was booked and released, court documents say.

A month later, the man killed himself, according to the Greene County Medical Examiner's Office.

Apparently unaware he was dead, authorities charged the man in September with manufacturing a controlled substance — a felony.

The News-Leader is withholding the dead man's name, having spoken with a relative who did not want it published.

The man's criminal charge no longer appears in online court records.

The News-Leader reported on the aircraft division of the highway patrol in January.

At that time, there were nine pilots in the Missouri State Highway Patrol's Aircraft Division.

The patrol's aircraft division was a part of 12,951 total enforcement contacts in 2017, most of which were traffic stops, according to the highway patrol. They also assisted in 26 pursuits — 23 of which resulted in the driver's arrest.

One of the pilots, Sgt. Dan Wohnoutka, said it costs about $75 to $80 an hour to fly a Cessna single-engine plane.

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Those figures include fuel, maintenance and the pilot's salary, Wohnoutka said.

For years, the highway patrol utilized a program funded completely by the Drug Enforcement Administration to catch large-scale marijuana farms, Wohnoutka said.

In the summer months, Wohnoutka said, pilots would fly helicopters — "low and slow" — following up on tips or just looking for marijuana farms.

"The majority of days you found something growing somewhere," he said.

Despite the success, Wohnoutka said, those type of operations pretty much ended in 2011 because of a technicality with state and federal funding requirements.