COON RAPIDS, Minn. (WCCO) — Three people have been charged with stealing copper wire from an abandoned Circuit City store.
Police were called to the store on Coon Rapids Boulevard after the alarm was set off. The alarm was installed because of a number of previous thefts in the building.
Officers saw a Ford Explorer leaving the building when they arrived. They stopped the vehicle and noted a number of tools typically used to steal copper wire from buildings.
Surveillance video showed the Ford Explorer pulling up to the building and the three people inside the car using bolt cutters on the property.
Two of them — Chadwick William Axel, 39, and Stephen Anthony Wiley, 53 — admitted to police that they were entering the building to steal copper wire. Twenty-five-year-old Cody Jay Spaeth-Lindquist admitted that he drove the other two to the building, knowing they were going to steal wire.
Wiley was also found with an amount of meth on his person.
All now face criminal charges.
