Three Alabama men are in jail after sheriff’s deputies said they downed a 150-foot cell tower and were caught cutting it up to sell as scrap metal.
William H. Cameron, Ricky Reed and David Leon Weaver all remained in the Washington County Jail Tuesday on a charge of first-degree criminal mischief, jail records showed.
Credit: Washington County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Washington County Sheriff's Office
Washington County Sheriff's Office officials said Lt. Bobby Jeter was informed shortly before 11 a.m. Friday that an operations manager with Crown Castle, a cell tower provider, had found one of its towers lying in a wooded area in McIntosh, a small town about 40 miles north of Mobile. Jeter met the operations manager at the site and they confirmed that the guy wires of the tower had been cut, causing the tower to fall.
The tower also damaged a building belonging to Crown Castle in the fall, authorities said. Jeter told Fox10 in Mobile that neighbors across the street from the tower site reported hearing a loud boom the night before.
"He thought it was a sonic boom, but it was this tower falling," Jeter told the news station. "We asked him to keep an eye on this area and all the deputies was close-patrolling this area."
Credit: Washington County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Washington County Sheriff's Office
Sheriff's Office officials said the neighbor called dispatchers Sunday evening and reported hearing the sound of power tools at the site of the fallen tower. Deputies and police officers from the McIntosh Police Department went to the site and found Cameron, Reed and Weaver using a portable generator to power tools they were using to dismantle the cell tower.
"The generator was running (and) there was three guys in the woods cutting the tower up," Jeter told Fox10. "They was able to sneak up on them and they didn't even hear them because the generator was making so much noise."
All three men were arrested at the scene. The deputies and police officers found pieces of the cell tower loaded into one suspect's pickup truck, authorities said.
"That was just the metal, but the antennas that were on here, they're all aluminum," Jeter told the news station. "They was after that aluminum. It's a higher price.
“They were gonna, eventually, if nobody caught them, salvage this whole tower.”
Fox10 reported that Cameron, Reed and Weaver have all faced felony property crime charges in the past. The three men have previously been charged with a total of 37 property crimes, according to the news station.
Sheriff's Office officials said Crown Castle had more than $300,000 invested in the cell tower location that was vandalized. The tower was not operational at the time it was cut down, Fox10 reported.
First-degree criminal mischief is a Class C felony in Alabama, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
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