A TRAVELLING gang of criminals may have been responsible for the death-defying theft of copper wire from live power cables.

Police believe gang members must have scaled three poles supporting overhead lines at Eastnor, near Ledbury, before making off with about £300 of metal. The poles are about 150 metres apart and it is believed the thieves climbed to a height of about six metres before cropping copper wire from electrical conductors.

The theft, in the early hours of the morning, left nearby bed and breakfast Massington Lodge without power for 11 hours, when a generator was brought in.

Full power was not restored to the premises until 11pm. Owner Suzanne Smyth said: “The first thing we knew about it was when the bedroom alarm clock went off at about 4am and my husband went down to check the fuse board. It’s not nice to realise that criminals were so close, and I am surprised they are not dead.”

Mrs Smyth was full of praise for engineers from Western Power, who worked into the night to restore her connection and used aluminium instead of copper cables, because they are less tempting to thieves.

A Western Power spokesman said the thieves risked electrocution and death with their actions. He said: “It was a large amount of cabling to support one property, but one property affected is one too many, and the thieves were dicing with death for small rewards.”

West Mercia Constabulary is now liaising with other forces to see if a travelling gang of criminals was responsible for the incident, on Thursday, February 23.

A police spokesman said: “We are liaising with West Midlands Police and other forces to establish whether we could have had criminals travelling in from outside.

“It appears that thieves carried out this theft while the power was still connected and it goes without saying that this is an extremely dangerous course of action.”

Anyone with any information on the theft should call police on 101.