A man is in custody after vandals knocked out communications towers across Hawkins County, Tennessee, overnight Saturday into Sunday, September 6, temporarily disrupting the county’s emergency communications system before deputies made an arrest within hours.
Charles McDonald Cheeld V was detained on a bond revocation and has been charged with burglary and theft of property over $10,000.
The sheriff’s office said Cheeld allegedly stole approximately $20,000 in equipment.
According to the Hawkins County Sheriff’s Office, vandals targeted the county’s communications tower along with several cellular and privately owned towers during the overnight hours. The office’s use of the plural “vandals” points to more than one person involved, though only one arrest has been made so far. Beyond knocking equipment offline, the towers were also reportedly burglarized, suggesting theft was a motive alongside the outages.
The Hawkins County Emergency Management Agency and the county’s E-911 director worked through the outage and had emergency communications capabilities restored by shortly after 5 a.m. Sunday, limiting how long the disruption affected 911 service in the county.
Detectives from HCSO, working with the department’s Fugitive Unit, opened an investigation immediately and took a male suspect into custody by 3 p.m. the same day. Officers recovered items connected to the towers’ theft and vandalism during the arrest. The sheriff’s office has not released the suspect’s name or announced specific charges, and has not disclosed the extent of the damage or the value of the property recovered. Tennessee law grades vandalism charges by the dollar value of the damage, ranging from a misdemeanor for damage under $500 up to a Class B felony for damage exceeding $60,000, so the eventual charges will likely hinge on figures the sheriff’s office has not yet made public.
The Hawkins County incident follows a similar case in Lyon County, Kentucky, the week before, where two men were arrested for stealing copper from a telecom tower. Copper theft and vandalism at cell sites have remained a persistent problem for tower owners and carriers, with stripped copper grounding and cabling both a safety hazard and a recurring repair cost long after the thieves are gone. The Hawkins County Sheriff’s Office said its investigation remains active and ongoing.
