Metal Theft Continues to Grow

On June 22 at about 10:15 p.m., the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office Bureau of Investigations Directed Patrol Unit in Louisiana arrested two suspects for stealing oil field equipment valued at $64,000 in Lafayette. The equipment was stolen from All Points, a business located at the Port of Iberia. Deputies located the vehicle carrying stolen equipment and placed the two suspects under arrest. They were each charged with theft of oil field equipment and criminal trespass. The two were booked into the Iberia Parish Jail.

In Pennsylvania, authorities are on the lookout for a group of thieves responsible for stealing copper ground wire from several local substations. The latest in the string of thefts occurred at around 4:15 a.m. June 22, when robbers cut out a large piece of barbed wire to gain entrance to a substation near Cranberry, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The thieves then cut the copper wire directly from a large transformer, triggering what is known as an arc flash explosion. The explosion crippled the transformer, leaving 3,800 Cranberry-area residents without power for most of June 22. The June 22 incident is one of four copper wire thefts to occur in the Cranberry area within a week. Copper robberies have become more commonplace in recent months due to the increasing value of the ground wire.