Harger: A Kent business lost $90,000 to copper wire theft. The accused got $113.40 at a recycler. He didn’t show up for court

UPDATE: An earlier version of this commentary noted the suspect was scheduled for arraignment this morning. He didn’t show up. Gary Lewis Witherbee failed to appear at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent. King County prosecutors moved for a bench warrant, which is now active. For context, it’s his 40th. We’ve updated the piece to include his name and the new details.

$113.40.

That’s what the copper was worth at the recycler. The business it came from has lost more than $90,000. Merry Christmas.

Witherbee was scheduled for arraignment this morning on charges of first-degree theft and first-degree malicious mischief. He turns 70 next month. He couldn’t be bothered to show.

A 68-year-old with a powered hacksaw at a Kent warehouse, 6 a.m. on Christmas Day

According to the charging documents, security cameras recorded two people arriving at an Eagle Beverage warehouse in Kent around 6 a.m. on December 25, 2024. They can be heard discussing “having a better plan” for removing the heavy-gauge copper cables connecting a commercial generator to the building. They had bolt cutters. They had a powered hacksaw. They left on foot, returned in daylight in a maroon 1998 Ford F-150, pulled the cables, loaded them up, and drove off.

Eagle Beverage makes plastic cutlery for restaurants, including regional McDonald’s locations. They need the generator because Puget Sound Energy (PSE) can’t supply enough power for their automated equipment. No cables, no generator. No generator, no business.

“Every day that they aren’t able to operate, they estimate that it costs them about $12,000 in lost opportunities,” Casey McNerthney, a spokesperson for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, told KIRO Newsradio.

Six operating days. Dark. Over Christmas.

Kent police found the receipt in Witherbee’s truck. With his own license plate written on it

Kent Police Detective Justin Campbell ran a Flock camera query and matched the F-150 from the security footage the same day the theft was reported. Flock cameras are the license plate readers mounted at intersections around Kent and other cities, and they work. Police traced the plate to Witherbee, located the truck near a Comfort Inn in Kent that afternoon, and impounded it.

Then they waited. It took until March 2025, more than two months, for a judge to approve the search warrant on the impounded truck. The evidence was sitting in a sealed vehicle in a police impound lot the entire time.

When they finally got in, the truck told the whole story.

In the truck bed: police said they found a bucket with coiled rubber tubing that turned out to be the casing from the stolen cables. Cut cable connectors with colored tape matching the originals. On the driver’s floorboard: a receipt from Valley Recycling in Pacific dated December 26, the day after the theft. Thirty-six pieces of #2 copper at $3.15 each.

$113.40.

On the receipt, in handwriting, the license plate number of the truck police had already matched to Witherbee. Valley Recycling confirmed the sale. They also identified his passenger.

$113.40 for copper that cost a business more than $90,000 to recover from.

Eagle Beverage had already been hit once. They’d spent $90,000 recovering. Then it happened again

The charging documents note a previous copper theft at the same warehouse had already shut down production and cost Eagle Beverage about $90,000 in total losses. That’s why they installed the motion-activated camera under the generator. That camera caught the Christmas morning theft.

McNerthney laid out the second round of damage: “about $12,000 in damage and about $7,000 in new security costs,” plus six days offline at $12,000 a day.

Two copper thefts. One location. Over $180,000 in total losses.

“You don’t want to see businesses move out or even suffer through this because there’s no requirement that they stay,” McNerthney said.

There isn’t. Eagle Beverage can leave Kent any time it wants. A lot of businesses already have.

Gary Witherbee has 39 bench warrants, felony convictions going back two decades, and just earned number 40

The charging documents paint a picture of a defendant well known to the courts. Witherbee’s record in the state’s Judicial Access Browser System showed 39 bench warrants before this morning. Now it’s 40. He has felony convictions for first-degree identity theft (two counts from 2017), second-degree stolen property (2011), second-degree burglary (2008), and attempting to elude a pursuing police vehicle (2003 and 2001). At least 12 more gross misdemeanor and misdemeanor convictions dating back to 2001, mostly property and traffic offenses.

Forty bench warrants. One person. And this morning he couldn’t be bothered to show up.

Kent police referred the case in July 2025. The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office filed charges on July 13, 2026. There were no new case referrals for Witherbee between the alleged theft and the filing. As always, he’s presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Treat metal recyclers like pawn shops. That’s the fix

McNerthney told KIRO Newsradio the fix is straightforward: require metal recyclers to use the same online database pawn shops already use.

“It’s really a simple fix,” he said. “An online database that police across King County can search, where they look and see what was bought, who bought it, and that merchandise is held for a week or so. If they determine that it is stolen, they can act on it right away.”

Pawn shops do this now. Metal recyclers don’t. Someone can allegedly strip thousands in copper from a business on Christmas morning, sell it the next day for $113.40, and nobody in law enforcement knows until a detective finds the receipt months later. King County Prosecuting Attorney Leesa Manion has been pushing the legislature on this. The database exists. Pawn shops prove the model works. One bill.

One thing worth noting: Valley Recycling did the right thing here. They recorded the plate number, identified the seller and his passenger, and cooperated fully with Kent Police. That’s exactly what prosecutors are asking every metal recycler in the state to do. Valley did it voluntarily. A lot of recyclers don’t, and there’s no law that says they have to. That’s the gap.

A business that makes plastic forks for your local McDonald’s has now lost more than $180,000 to copper wire theft. The accused has 40 bench warrants and a criminal record stretching back to 2001. The receipt for the stolen copper was on his floorboard with his own plate number on it. And when the court asked him to show up and answer for it, he didn’t.

Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here. 

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