2 Georgia men died by electrocution while breaking into a power company substation, police say
Two Georgia men stealing copper wire at an electrical power station died by electrocution and the subsequent 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 power substation by the old mill, Lieutenant Kevin Holbrook told CBS News. Thieves were attempting to steal copper wiring and electrical components, police said.
Both 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, said Kevin Wetzel, deputy coroner of Hall County. Autopsies are still being conducted to confirm the cause of death, Wetzel said.
Holbrook said one of the men was killed by electrocution, and "there were visible marks" on his body. The other man could have been killed by the transformer explosion, he said. Recovery efforts were challenging, he said, with one of the men's bodies found "one-two stories up on the top of a substation" and the other man was found at the bottom of a substation in "a pool of water."
More recent statistics aren't available but the U.S. Department of Energy estimated in 2007 that metal theft costs U.S. businesses around $1 billion a year. After the report's release 21 states implemented laws or implemented fines for metal thieves, the National Insurance Crime Bureau said. In 2012, 33,775 insurance claims for metal theft—with 96 % of those for copper alone were filed, they said.
Holbrook said the Gainesville power station had numerous robberies in 2008, and then thefts stopped until recently. This was the second time in two years thieves had tried to steal copper wire and electrical components from this substation, linked, Holbrook thinks, to the opioid crisis.
Nationwide, power stations have been reporting a rise in copper wire or metal theft. A man was electrocuted and killed in October for stealing $20 of copper wire, an Oregon utility said on its website. In West Virginia, copper wire theft led to one person being electrocuted and 600 customers without power, reported local television station WVNS. And a man was federally charged after causing $1.5 million dollars of damage to a power substation in Philadephia while stealing copper wire and other metals.
The robbers sell the wire to scrap yards or third-party individuals, said Holbrook. Profits from these sales are generally low, he said, but the risk is incredibly high.
"It's just pennies on the dollars for this type of stuff," said Holbrook. "It's not worth it to put your life on the line."
