[Note: This article has been updated with information from Altice USA/Optimum.]
Two residents of Asheville, N.C.—a 30-year-old woman and 26-year-old man—have been arrested in connection with the Optimum outage that saw tens of thousands of customers, including much of New Canaan, lose their Internet service about 10 days ago, according to Norwalk Police.
At about 7:16 a.m. on March 24, officers from the department responded to a report of damage to Optimum cable lines on Broad Street, a road that runs between Silvermine Avenue and Route 7 in Norwalk, according to a Tweet posted Sunday by the Norwalk Police Department.
“Optimum personnel on the scene reported over 2,000 fiber optic lines had been cut and as a result over 40,000 customers had lost service,” Norwalk PD said. [UPDATE: 16,000 customers were impacted, not 40,000, according to Alexa Bonadonna, communications director at Altice USA/ Optimum.]
In New Canaan, the Friday morning outage saw scores of locals flock to the new New Canaan Library, whose WiFi was up and running.
Norwalk police said their detectives “assumed the investigation and quickly identified a suspect vehicle and developed suspects.”
Police obtained arrest warrants for the pair. On Saturday, detectives conducted a “surveillance operation” in which they saw the female suspect inside a business in Bridgeport. She was arrested without incident and, a short time later, police found the man in a wooded area in Stratford, Norwalk PD said.
Each was charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree criminal mischief, conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny and interfering. The woman also was charged with providing a false statement. The man was additionally charged with criminal attempt to commit first-degree larceny.
Bond was listed at $200,000 for each of them, and they were scheduled to appear April 11 in state Superior Court.