Governor of North Carolina. Roy Cooper has announced a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for damaging two electrical substations in Moore County.
The state reward brings the total offered to find the culprit(s) to $75,000, with Duke Energy and Moore County offering $25,000 each.
“An attack on our critical infrastructure will not be tolerated,” Cooper said. “I appreciate the concerted efforts of law enforcement to leave no stone unturned in finding the criminals who committed this crime, and I thank Moore County and Duke Energy for matching the state award. arrest and conviction from responsible persons.”
Two substations operated by Duke Energy were taken out by gunfire Saturday night at approximately 7 p.m 40 thousand people were left without electricity.
Federal, state and local officials said the attack was deliberate, and no motive had been released as of Wednesday.
Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields described the incident as “unprecedented” in the county, saying there was extensive damage caused by gunfire at two substations.
On Monday, The FBI joined the investigation The incident was being investigated by the district law enforcement agencies and the State Bureau of Investigation, or SBI.
Fields said Sunday that he had no idea there was any truth to rumors that the outages were somehow connected to the drag show protest. “No, I don’t know. Is it possible? Yes, anything is possible. But we couldn’t tie anything to the drag show,” Fields told reporters on Sunday.
Duke Energy’s Jeff Brooks initially expected outages to last through Thursday, but restoration times were cut to Wednesday.
“During our investigation of the outage, we found that the substation was intentionally impacted, which damaged several pieces of equipment in the substation and knocked out power there,” Brooks said. “Unlike a hurricane, where you could go in and divert the power, that wasn’t an option in this case, so the repairs have to be completed. In most cases, it’s just replacing a piece of that equipment. and our crews are currently working on a repair plan.”
According to PowerOutage.us, as of 8 p.m. Wednesday, only one person was without power in Moore County.
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