LOS ANGELES - An alleged copper wire thief hid inside a manhole in Los Angeles and refused to come out for nearly four hours on Tuesday morning.

According to the Los Angeles Police Department, authorities responded to a call about a copper wire theft at an underground vault around 2 a.m.

While one person surrendered and was detained at the scene, a second person went down into the vault and refused to come out for several hours.

Authorities eventually used tear gas canisters to get the suspect out. By 6 a.m., the suspect finally emerged from the manhole and was taken into custody.

The incident highlights the ongoing problem of copper theft. California Attorney General Rob Bonta previously said the telecom industry alone reported nearly 6,000 incidents of copper theft and infrastructure vandalism nationwide between June and December 2024, with about one-third of the incidents happening in California.

‘Bad actors steal encased copper cables and cut them into short lengths before burning them to remove the sheathing to reveal the raw copper inside,’ Bonta said last summer. ‘That copper is then typically sold to scrap metal dealers, some of whom, in periods of high demand, are willing to accept the valuable commodity purportedly without knowing its origin.’