A man who police say was attempting to steal copper wire caused $100,000 in damage in the El Sereno area, after a concerned citizen spotted what looked like three men sawing apart a bus bench in the middle of the night. Two people are now in custody, and the case remains ongoing.
According to NBC Los Angeles, the citizen called police just before 2 a.m. after seeing what appeared to be three men cutting apart a bus bench with an electric saw. LAPD officers responding to the 5000 block of Valley Boulevard found an open manhole behind the bus bench, with two of the three suspects inside, police told the outlet. Inside that underground vault, the men had allegedly attempted to steal copper wire, causing damage the outlet’s report described in two ways — in one instance as $100,000 in damages, and elsewhere as about $100,000 in estimated damages.
One of the suspects fell down the hole and needed help from the Los Angeles Fire Department to climb back out, the station’s report states. That suspect was then taken to a hospital for evaluation. The report notes two people are in custody while the investigation continues, though it does not address what became of the third person the caller said they saw at the scene.
A Citywide Pattern of Vault Raids and Darkened Streets
The El Sereno case lands amid what city officials and state regulators describe as a surge in copper wire theft across Los Angeles. A Los Angeles City Council motion filed with the Los Angeles City Clerk found that thieves had darkened 3,738 streetlights across Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights and El Sereno, and that the 6th Street Viaduct itself went dark after criminals made off with tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of copper. That motion proposed forming a Copper Wire Task Force pairing the LAPD with the city’s Bureau of Street Lighting, funded in part by shifting $200,000 from a Council District 14 allocation into the Police Fund…