MARYSVILLE, Calif. — A man is in custody and accused of stealing wires from Comcast, resulting in hours of outages in Yuba County and Nevada County Wednesday.
According to the Marysville Police Department, they were called to East 11th and Ramirez Streets around 7 a.m. for a report of two men dragging copper wires. Officers arrived and didn’t see anyone matching the description.
Then, around 10 a.m., Marysville police were called about a Comcast wire theft near the Yuba County Sheriff’s Office that happened around 7 a.m. According to a news release, it caused phone lines and the internet to go down for hours across Yuba and Nevada counties.
The damage is estimated to cost Comcast around $100,000.
Officers continued looking for the suspect and found 26-year-old Javier Chacon with a lot of wiring at an apartment complex on the 1100 block of Ramirez Street.
Investigators believe Chacon is responsible for the wire theft, and said the motive seems to be his ‘mistaken belief the wires he stole were made of copper.’
He was arrested on suspicion of felony vandalism, grand theft and felony injury to communication lines.
