Published: July 31, 2008 11:26 pm      

Brothers charged in copper wire theft

Two Johnstown brothers were jailed after police said they used an all-terrain vehicle to steal $5,000 worth of copper from the Norfolk Southern Corp. property in East Conemaugh Borough.

Adam Michael Smith, 27, and Karl Henry Smith, 22, both of Woodvale Avenue, were charged Tuesday with theft, receiving stolen property, disorderly conduct, possessing instruments of crime and defiant trespass.

Police from East Conemaugh and Johnstown were called to the Plum Street area, where two men in dark clothes reportedly were using an ATV with no headlights to drag a large wooden spool down the street. Police followed the drag marks to a home on Woodvale Avenue.

There, they found one man wearing a camouflage jacket and another attempting to remove his clothing inside a garage. They also found a sheathed knife, hand-held radios, two quad runners, bolt cutters, a cellular phone, binoculars and a large wooden spool of cooper wire.

Police said they also recovered a jacket, gloves, an ax, a cargo strap and a woolly cap with eyeholes cut out of it.

Several identical wooden spools of 1-inch-thick copper wire labeled Norfolk Southern were found later near a home in the borough, police said.

The Smiths were arraigned by District Judge Mary Ann Zanghi of Vinco and sent to the Cambria County Prison after each failed to post $5,000 bond.