Seven people were arrested in Perry County last week for stealing a collection of copper wire worth around $3,000.
According to Pine Belt News, the theft of 560 feet of copper wire from AT&T telephone poles caused severe outages on the night of Sunday, June 1. More copper was reportedly stolen from multiple other sites the same night.
The outage, along with AT&T crews discovering the wire missing on the following Wednesday, sparked an investigation by the Perry County Sheriff’s Department.
A day later, two suspects were found by a deputy in possession of multiple tubs of burnt wire, leading to multiple arrests. A seventh suspect was taken into custody Friday after attempting to sell the stolen wire at a local scrap yard.
Kimberly Holifield, Troy Pool, Brittany Davis, Timothy Rhymes, Kevin Langley, William Phillip, and Katlyn Bryce were the arrestees.
The price of copper has risen above $11,500 per metric ton, an all-time high that is leading to a proliferation of theft for those desiring to resell the wire for a quick profit.
“Individually, these isolated crimes cause big enough headaches of their own,” FBI officials said in a statement regarding the thefts. “Taken together, however, they present a fairly significant problem for our country — a threat to public safety and to U.S. critical infrastructure.”
In the last 18 months, both businesses and individuals have been arrested for the crime.
