Woman accused of using extension cord to steal neighbor’s electricity
EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WFIE/Gray News) — A woman in Indiana is accused of using an extension cord to steal her neighbor’s electricity, resulting in sky-high electric bills for the victim.
The alleged victim, who identified himself as Charles Lowe, is a veteran and cancer survivor who is also fighting COPD.
Lowe said he noticed his electric bill skyrocket in November, costing him thousands of dollars each month since.
He finally found out why.
“My roommate told me, ‘Hey, you need to come back and look at this,’ so I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘Come back here and look at this.’ So, I went back there with him and he showed me. They’d run drop cords out from underneath my trailer and run them to their trailer,” Lowe said.
He said his next-door neighbor, 50-year-old Tina Milburn, had been stealing electricity from him and his roommate for nearly five months.
“I’ve been going through so much this last year,” Lowe said. “I fought cancer, I got COPD, and I just got out of the hospital, and I just … I can’t handle all this stuff that’s going on right now. I want to be treated how I treat people. I treat people the way I want to be treated.”
Police said Milburn admitted to crawling under Lowe’s trailer to plug in the extension cord. She told police she was using the electricity to power a light, and she planned to give Lowe $100 without explaining why.
Lowe said while he is happy the theft has stopped, he is still stuck with paying his massive electric bills.
Lowe said CenterPoint Energy allowed him to set up a payment plan through July, but beyond that, it told Lowe there is nothing else it can do.
Lowe said he does not understand why someone would do something like this, especially without asking.
“There’s two things I don’t like in life: that’s a thief and a liar. You know, if they would have come over and asked me, maybe I might have helped them, but not really because, you know, I can’t afford it,” Lowe said.
Milburn is charged with felony burglary. She had her first court appearance Monday morning.
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