Heavy-duty vandalism cuts cable, Internet to thousands

Police in Galveston are looking for a guy who cut some customers' cable lines. No big deal, right? Well, yeah, in this case it is: The suspect used a backhoe to destroy fiber-optic lines, disrupting cable and Internet service to about 23,000 customers in Galveston, Jamaica Beach and Tiki Island on Sunday. Houstonist sees we're not the only ones fed up with Lifetime's parade of crappy Christmas movies.

According to The Galveston County Daily News, Time Warner has redundant sets of fiber optic lines serving Galveston Island so service won't be interrupted if one line is damaged. But this guy damaged the lines in three different places, which resulted in a total outage — and he damaged a wall and a payment box used by Time Warner customers, too, which makes us think he wasn't too fond of the cable company. "We don’t know if it was a prank, a disgruntled ex-employee, someone drunk or just stupid," police Lt. Joe Peña told the Daily News.

Officials still don't know who they're looking for, exactly: Someone reported seeing a man using heavy equipment to tear down fiber optic lines at about 5 a.m. Sunday in the 8500 block of Teichman Road in Galveston, but by the time police responded, the guy had fled the scene. Police said the tractor he was using was stolen belonged to TxDOT and was stolen from a nearby construction site. Time Warner said the damage ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars when lost revenues are factored in; Peña said the suspect could face a felony criminal mischief charge for damaging the lines and felony theft charges for stealing the tractor.