Rome, Jun 12 (IANS/AKI): A Romanian national has been arrested in the Italian capital on suspicion of stealing telephone wires weighing around a tonne.
The man was arrested after a car chase.
The 29-year-old Romanian faces charges of receiving stolen goods, theft and resisting arrest.
His alleged accomplice escaped after the suspects broke into a warehouse in Rome's Tor Vergata area, loaded four reels of copper wire into a stolen van and drove off.
An off-duty policemen alerted colleagues, who pursued the van in several patrol cars.
Police captured one of the two suspects after they forced the vehicle to stop but the other one managed to escape.
Gangs of thieves regularly steal large quantities of copper, lead and other metals in Italy to sell them in the black market. Gangs have also been known to steal rail tracks.