JOHNSTOWN — The county’s top law enforcement official said Christopher J. Flint was already under investigation in Schenectady County when he was nabbed April 15 with 45 pounds of marijuana in an unconnected random encounter near Meco in the town of Johnstown.

Flint, 29, a former Gloversville resident most recently living on Hickory Hill Road in Fonda, has since been indicted in both Fulton and Schenectady counties.

Fulton County District Attorney Louise K. Sira said that on April 15 Flint had been “on the radar” of the Fulton County Drug Task Force, but his arrest that day was just happenstance. She said Flint was then already a subject of an active investigation in Schenectady County, where he was charged in June with purchasing large quantities of marijuana from alleged Rotterdam dealer Walter Smiley.

Flint and Smiley were among 19 people indicted in June by a Schenectady County grand jury directed by prosecutors from the state Attorney General’s Office.

Flint was driving a late-model white Lincoln Navigator April 15 when he traveled across some private property to reach the state forest land in Meco. The property owner, looking out a window, reported seeing Flint’s passenger get out and carry a box into the woods.

The property owner called police, Sira said, just as a state trooper was on patrol in the vicinity. The trooper arrived as Flint pulled back on County Highway 131 and a chase ensued, Sira said.

Flint did not have time to pick up his passenger, Steven R. Tryon, 25, of West Madison Avenue, Johnstown, Sira said, leaving him walking along the highway.

Sira said Tryon was soon stopped by a Fulton County sheriff’s deputy who quickly rejected Tryon’s story he was taking a walk after a fight with his girlfriend.

Officers retrieved the box from the woods and found it to contain two commercial-grade marijuana bricks — both weighing over 22 pounds. It was obviously not marijuana packaged by a local grower, Sira said. Police still don’t know why he put it in the woods, she added.

As of last September, Sira said, MAGLOCLEN — a federally organized police information-sharing network — estimated street sale marijuana prices in Fulton County at $250 to $300 an ounce. Using the lesser value, Sira said, the two defendants possessed about $180,000 worth of weed.

Investigators, Sira said, have determined Flint may have been supplying up to half the marijuana sold in Fulton County.

Though Flint was involved in a stabbing incident in 2003 in Johnstown, he does not appear to have arrests or convictions on felony drug charges. Sira said she cannot comment on Flint’s criminal record.

The two men were indicted in Fulton County on charges of first-degree criminal possession of marijuana.

A call to the Attorney General’s Office to obtain details on the Schenectady County allegations was not returned Tuesday afternoon.

Flint is free on $100,000 bail in Schenectady County and $50,000 in Fulton County. He is represented by Gloversville attorney Robert Abdella, who said Tuesday he cannot comment on a pending criminal case.