Guilty Plea in Cable Outage Case

A Delta County man pleads guilty to causing the cable outage affecting much of the southern U.P. 2 weeks ago.

29-year-old Brian Roberts of Rock has pleaded guilty to discharging a firearm, causing more than $50 of property damage.

He was arrested late Friday night.

The outage happened back on October 1st.

The Marquette County Sheriff’s Department says the outage came from a damaged overhead line along County Road 444 in Turin Township.

Charter cable TV and Internet service in Escanaba, and most of Dickinson County, went down for several hours.

Roberts admitted to blasting the fiber-optic cable with a shotgun.

The charge he pleaded guilty to is a 1-year misdemeanor that could also bring a $500 fine.