Two Georgia men stealing copper wire at a power plant were electrocuted and killed by the force of a transformer explosion, the Gainesville Police Department told CBS News.
Around 3 a.m. Monday, police received a call from someone at a nearby business saying there had been an explosion at the old mill’s electrical substation, Lt. Kevin Holbrook told CBS News . The thieves were trying to steal copper wiring and electrical components, police said.
Suspected thieves electrocuted, killed in an overnight robbery at the electrical substation. pic.twitter.com/xlKUTiGosE
— Gainesville Police (@COGPolice) April 3, 2023
Both the fire and police departments responded to the explosion and upon arrival two men were found dead at the scene, police said.
Shane Joseph Long, 45, and Christopher Blair Wood, 44, both of Gainesville, were the two men, he said Kevin Wetzel, Hall County Deputy Coroner. Autopsies are still being performed to confirm the cause of death, Wetzel said.
Holbrook said one of the men died of electrocution and “there were visible marks” on his body. The other man may have been killed by the transformer explosion, he said. Recovery efforts were difficult, he said, with the bodies of one of the men found “a floor or two on top of a substation” and the other man found at the bottom of a substation in “a pool of water”.
No more recent statistics are available, but the US Department of Energy estimated in 2007 that metal theft costs American companies about a billion dollars a year. After the report was released, 21 states implemented laws or implemented fines for metal thieves, the National Insurance Crime Bureau said. In 2012, 33,775 insurance claims were filed for metal theft, with 96 percent of those filed for copper alone, they said.
Holbrook said the Gainesville power plant had numerous burglaries in 2008, and then the burglaries stopped until recently. This was the second time in two years that thieves tried to steal copper wires and electrical components from this substation, tied, Holbrook believes, to the opioid crisis.
Across the country, power plants have been reporting an increase in theft of copper or metal wire. Man electrocuted and killed in October for stealing $20 worth of copper wire, Oregon utility he said on his website. In West Virginia, copper wire theft left one person electrocuted and 600 customers without power. local television station WVNS. And a man he was federally charged after causing $1.5 million in damage to an electrical substation in Philadelphia while stealing copper wire and other metals.
Thieves sell the cable to scrap yards or third parties, Holbrook said. The profits from such sales are generally low, he said, but the risk is incredibly high.
“It’s just pennies on the dollar for this kind of thing,” Holbrook said. “It’s not worth putting your life in danger.”
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Cara Tabachnick
