Tucson police have arrested 43-year old Anthony Rivera for stealing a U-Haul truck and about $20,000 worth of copper wire. Rivera tried to evade police by driving through a series of neighborhood streets, but they were eventually able to get him to surrender, pulling into a nearby gas station. Once they had him in custody, they found over $20,000 worth of stolen copper wire in the bed of the truck. He now faces two felony charges: Vehicular theft and theft of metal.
Thieves have recently been targeting areas where there is exposed copper because of its high scrap value and the ease of taking it to a number of different scrap yards for cash. Stolen copper is valuable as scrap metal because it can be easily reused to make fibre optics and high value plumbing and electrical parts.