5 charged in copper wire theft

Thieves were also busy in Bella Vista Village on Wednesday night when they visited a banana farm. But instead of fruit, their target was several hundred feet of copper wire installed in a cafeteria on farms twenty one and twenty-two, owned by Alvarado Murray. Independence police recovered the stolen metal on Thursday at the home of forty nine year old Luis Velasquez, a Honduran resident of the village. Police have charged Velasquez, nineteen year old Patrick Malcolm and thirty-three year old Luis Miguel Diaz, along with two minors, aged fifteen and sixteen. Police say all five were present at Velasquez’s home when they discovered the stolen goods. The theft of copper wire has grown to epidemic proportions in Belize with B.E.L. as the prime target, along with a number of relatively remote agro-industrial enterprises.