Credit: Falls Township police
A 61-year-old man was charged Saturday with cutting Comcast lines and causing service outages.
Kenneth A. Benjamin Sr., of Morrisville, was charged with theft by unlawful taking, receiving stolen property, and criminal mischief. He was arraigned at 8 a.m. by District Judge Lisa Gaier and sent to county prison in lieu of 10 percent of $50,000 bail.
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Falls Township police said they were alerted by a Comcast worker around 12:20 a.m. Saturday that there was a problem in the area of Tyburn Road and Woolston Drive. The Comcast field maintenance supervisor told investigators he spotted an older man in a dark-colored pickup truck parked on the side of a roadway near an railroad embankment. A few minutes later, there were reports of various outages in Morrisville Borough.
The Comcast employee, according to police, discovered the problems emanated from the area where the pickup truck was spotted earlier.
The Comcast employee found the pickup truck in the area again. It had tools in it, police said.
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The Comcast worker discovered several fiber optic lines running from an overhead railroad bridge to a buried junction had been cut. Several splicing junctions had also been cut, police said.
The Comcast employee questioned the man about the cables and the man left, police said.
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Officers found the pickup truck in the parking lot of a nearby 7-Eleven and identified the man spotted near the site of the damage as Benjamin, police said.
Inside the truck, the black cylindrical housing of a splicing junction, several lengths of fiber optic cable, and bolt cutters were spotted, police said.
It was not released why Benjamin had been cutting the lines.
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Editor’s Note: All individuals arrested or charged with a crime are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The story was compiled using information from police and public court documents.
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