An attempted theft of copper wire on Tuesday led to a pre-dawn barricade situation — inside a city manhole — authorities said.
A thief in Chatsworth tried to evade law enforcement by hiding in the manhole for nearly four hours, a police official said.
At 1:44 a.m., the Los Angeles Police Department responded to the 20400 block of West Germain Street, a residential neighborhood that’s adjacent to Mason Park, after receiving a call of a possible wire theft in progress.
The alleged thieves were targeting an underground vault owned by AT&T through a manhole, ABC7 News reported. The Times did not receive a comment from the telecommunications company before publication. Manholes can provide access to underground electric utility and telecommunications cables and wires. These access points are typically used for adding or repairing cables.
When officers arrived on the scene, they detained one suspect immediately, but the second suspect was inside the manhole and refused to come out, barricading himself, said Officer Tony Im, a spokesperson for the Police Department.
Im did not clarify how — or with what — the suspect barricaded himself.
The official response grew as the Los Angeles Fire Department was called in to assist.
“We were standing by if the person turned out to be a patient or if they were having a medical issue,” said Lyndsey Lantz, public service officer for the Fire Department.
As the suspect refused to budge, officers tried various tactics to extract him.
First they tried using a K9 to coax the individual out, Im said. When the dog didn’t motivate the person out of the manhole, officers deployed tear gas. The suspect emerged and was arrested.
An AT&T team was at the site after the incident as the company launched its own investigation, ABC7 News reported.
It’s unclear if any copper wire was removed from the manhole.
This is the second theft involving copper wire and a manhole in the span of three months. In October, a resident of View Park-Windsor Hills, an unincorporated neighborhood in West Los Angeles, spied a man descending into a manhole and called police. When police arrived they said they found the man attempting to steal copper wire.
Copper wire theft has been wreaking havoc in neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles County, causing far-reaching internet service outages and cutting off phone service to seniors in South Los Angeles.
Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 476 into law, which increases penalties for thieves convicted of stealing copper wire and requires junk dealers to collect detailed records that verify a scrap metal seller’s identity and proof of ownership.
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