[June 07, 2011] BRIEF: Three men arrested in copper wire theft Tweet Jun 07, 2011 (The Honolulu Star-Advertiser - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Police arrested three men who had been walking through a Waianae Coast school campus carrying 400 pounds of allegedly stolen heavy-duty copper wiring. Police said the 192 feet of copper wiring has a value of about $2,200 to $2,300. Witnesses saw the three men walking through Maile Elementary School with the copper at 7:10 a.m. Monday, apparently heading to their car, police said. Police had received a report of a nearby business, Maili Telecom Station, located at 87-380 Kulaaupuni St. that had been broken into and had copper wire ripped out of the building. Police arrived at the school and arrested a 35-year-old Waianae man and two men with no local address, ages 20 and 27, on suspicion of detaining stolen property and second-degree burglary. William Alpeter, of NAI Chaney Brooks, said Maili Telecom, owned the vacant building, which is for sale. The thieves stripped the 1-1/2-inch thick cable, with about an inch of it being copper, out of the conduit in the building, he said. The cable was used to power a 2,500-KVA transformer. Maili Telecom had planned to install an undersea cable from the West Coast to Hawaii to Guam, but the project never went through, Alpeter said. To see more of The Star-Advertiser, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.staradvertiser.com/. Copyright (c) 2011, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]