OKLAHOMA CITY – Streetlights are not the only targets for thieves who steal copper wire, as a case decided recently by the state Court of Criminal Appeals showed.
Melissa Dawn Miller-Yocham, 37, of Muskogee, and her cousin, Shane Richard Martin, 44, of Howe, were charged with damage to, and theft of copper wire from, several transformers at the Arkhola Sand and Gravel Plant just north of Muskogee at US-69 and the Arkansas River in late 2017.
Muskogee County Deputy Sheriff Faye Banks received a report on Nov. 14, 2017, that someone entered the Arkhola sand plant and removed the tops from five transformers, allowing the oil in them to drain onto the ground; also, some copper wire was removed but not the copper coils.
Subsequently, cameras were installed in the vicinity “because it was believed suspects would return,” Banks reported.
Sure enough, Banks was notified on Nov. 29, 2017, that thieves removed the coils from three transformers and tipped over two others at the Arkhola sand plant. However, no pictures were obtained because of a rainstorm.
Banks was alerted less than a week later that the vandals struck the sand plant yet again and removed the heavy copper coils from one of the transformers. This time, though, the cameras snapped photos of two burglars: a male and a female.
Examining photos from the hidden cameras, Capt. Greg Martin identified the male intruder as Martin. And after photos of both suspects were posted on social media, the female was identified as Miller-Yocham.
A Muskogee County District Court jury convicted Miller-Yocham of grand larceny and malicious injury to property. In January 2020 she received two suspended two-year prison sentences and was ordered to pay $4,000 in restitution.
Miller-Yocham appealed her sentence, alleging two errors.
• She claimed that convictions for grand larceny and destruction of property amounted to double punishment “for what was essentially a single criminal act.” The appellate judges ruled that she “managed to destroy the transformers, whether or not she ever succeeded in harvesting copper or any other material from them.”
• Miller-Yocham argued that her conviction for malicious injury to property should be reversed because the trial court’s instructions to the jury “made no mention of the value of the damaged property.” Under state law, destruction of property becomes a felony if the value of the property is $1,000 or more.
However, the plant manager testified that the value of the copper stolen from the transformers was more than $1,000, and said the transformers, which were valued at $22,000, were irreparably damaged during the break-ins.
Moreover, Miller-Yocham “never questioned or challenged the value of the destroyed equipment” during the trial, the appeals court judges noted.
Consequently, the judgment and sentence of the Muskogee County court was affirmed on July 15.
She was previously convicted in Wagoner County in 2014 of knowingly concealing stolen property and false impersonation of another individual to create liability.
Martin, whose criminal record of felony convictions started 19 years ago, pleaded guilty in 2018 to both charges arising from the Arkhola sand plant burglaries; he received concurrent 10-year suspended sentences and was ordered to pay $2,375 in restitution. However, his sentence was revoked in February 2019 for failure to report to a probation officer and failure to make restitution.
In addition, Martin pleaded guilty in February 2019 to second-degree burglary and theft of copper from a building in Muskogee on two days in November 2018. He received three concurrent 30-year prison sentences and is confined at the James Crabtree Correctional Center at Helena.