Police said they may have uncovered a major copper theft ring yesterday when they arrested three people under a freeway overpass near the airport and found stripped wire insulation from what was about 10,000 pounds of copper.

"I expected to see some wiring, but this was unbelievable," said police Sgt. David Yomes, who made the arrests.

Yards and yards of thick, black wire insulation were found, with the copper inside gone. Yomes said it appears it came from wiring stolen from freeway light poles in Central and West O'ahu, darkening those stretches of road.

"I was very much surprised by the volume," said Yomes, a 25-year HPD veteran whose night patrol sector covers the Ke'ehi freeway interchange. "The thick ones (wire insulation) are (from) H-1 and H-2 Freeway copper, guaranteed."

The volume of insulation suggested that more than 10,000 pounds of copper wiring had been stripped, Yomes said.

Yomes, a patrol sergeant, was led to the cache when he tracked down a homeless woman who was a witness to Tuesday's accident that killed a suspected copper thief.

Yomes found the woman under the Nimitz/H-1 westbound onramp, stripping copper wiring with two men.

Stripping copper wiring is not a crime, but possession of drug paraphernalia is. A glass smoking pipe with crystal residue was nearby. So Yomes arrested Steffani R. Ross, 46; Ernesto "Nest" Lamarca Jr., 37; and Benjamin DeMello IV, 26, for a misdemeanor drug-related offense. Felony promotion of a dangerous drug could be tacked on if tests on the residue in the pipe turns out to be crystal methamphetamine.

"What was told to me was they were doing 200 to 300 pounds of copper a night," Yomes said. "This whole thing is about crystal meth and getting money to support the habit. They're getting over $2 a pound."

Ross admitted to being the person who placed the 911 call Tuesday at 9 p.m. to report Taily A. Corpuz's electrocution and fall from a utility pole at a new Navy housing construction site, according to Yomes. Corpuz later died at The Queen's Medical Center. Police said they found copper wire near Corpuz's body.

Ross' eyewitness statement could lead to the conclusion of the police investigation into Corpuz's death.

OTHER ITEMS FOUND

Yomes said the trio were arrested at 11 a.m. Police also found numerous bicycles, mopeds and disassembled parts of door knobs at the under-the-viaduct working site.

The scene gives police a good idea of the scope of what one major copper theft ring is capable of doing, Yomes said.

Yomes is familiar with the underground population in the area, not all of whom are homeless, and has learned that Corpuz, the three people he arrested, and another man — Matthew Clyde Pacopac, 29 — arrested on an outstanding $300 warrant yesterday, are part of a group allegedly stealing copper nightly.

"This group, everybody knows them in the area, is a nightly theft operation," Yomes said. "I've been doing stakeouts trying to catch them, but it's hit and miss for us. To catch a copper thief, you pretty much got to see them stealing it."

Yomes said he believed the group consists of six or seven people and "was the biggest one operating in the area."

In a statement yesterday to Yomes, Ross reportedly said she was with Corpuz and Pacopac at the construction site off Catlin Drive on Tuesday night.

FATAL CUT

The group allegedly took copper wiring from two homes scheduled for demolition. "She said they cut all the copper from an electric box and all the underground wiring," Yomes said.

According to Ross, Corpuz then climbed a utility pole to the transformer.

"He thought the wire was not 'hot' (carrying electrical current) because everything else at the houses was out," Yomes said. "When he cut the transformer wiring, the transformer blew. All she heard was a scream and he fell to the ground."

Ross and another person she identified as Pacopac carried Corpuz away from the pole, Yomes said. Ross went to a nearby hotel to call 911 while Pacopac performed CPR on Corpuz, Yomes added.

Ross and Pacopac left the scene before police arrived. When witnesses described the woman, Yomes knew who it was and went looking for her yesterday to obtain information to close the Corpuz case.

"I knew it was her because she always wears a baseball cap," Yomes said.

Kalihi Police Capt. Moana Heu said O'ahu Community Correctional Center Warden Nolan Espinda was able to send a work line of 20 inmates to assist police in clearing out the arrest scene.

The property is under state Department of Transportation management.

DOT did a major cleanup of the area last March, but maintaining it is a problem due to safety issues of sending in crews without police escort, department spokesman Scott Ishikawa said. One DOT employee was threatened with a gun by a homeless person a few years ago, he added.

"It's not a surprise," Ishikawa said of copper-stripping and other criminal activity under the viaduct. "We put up chain-link fences, but they use cutters for a number of reasons besides stripping copper."

Reach Rod Ohira at rohira@honoluluadvertiser.com.