Thieves broke into an electric supply business on Northside Drive recently and stole $80,o00 worth of copper, Channel 2 Action News reported, citing the manager.
Tony Larkins, the manager at City Electric Supply, showed Channel 2 where he said thieves peeled back the back fence of the business. Larkins produced video in which he said a man can be seen using a pole to tilt outside surveillance cameras upward.
Efforts were being made to reach the Atlanta Police Department for comment.
Larkins told Channel 2 he thinks the thieves then used a sledgehammer to break open a 4-foot hole in a double brick wall — a hole big enough to carry out 181 spools of wire.
“This is a double brick wall, so obviously they had to knock the first side out and knock the other side out,” Larkins told Channel 2.
Larkins said the gaping hole’s location was perfect for thieves to get away with stealing so much wire.
“They had to know the sensor was there because they didn’t go any further or it would set the sensor off,” Larkins said. The men worked around the sensors on the ceiling, loading up as much wire as they could. They cleared off entire shelves.
“They knew what not to take. They didn’t take fittings. They just took the copper things that they can get rid of right away,” Larkins told Channel 2.
Before breaking through the brick wall, the three to four men came by the business twice, a security camera showed. According to the security camera log, they came by Saturday at about 4 p.m. and then 9:30 p.m. Sunday night to load up all the wire.
“You know it’s sad. The first thing you would think of is ‘inside job.’ Somebody’s got to know this, but then last week another store in South Carolina got hit,” Larkins said. He said three other stores were also recently hit: one in Rome, where $70,000 in copper wire was stolen, and two major heists in South Carolina. Larkins told Channel 2 he thinks the men are stealing the wire in one state and selling it on the black market in another state.
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