Nearly 45,000 people were without power for five days, and an 87-year-old woman died because of the outage. The case remains unsolved.
MOORE COUNTY, N.C. — Tuesday, Dec. 3, marks two years since two Duke Energy substations were attacked in Moore County.
Nearly 45,000 people were without power for five days, and an 87-year-old woman died when her oxygen machine shut down as a result of the attack. The substations are about 10 miles apart.
Despite hundreds of leads, investigators are still in the dark when it comes to solving the case. At one point, officials asked the public for help identifying a minivan seen on the night of the shooting.
The FBI, Moore County, the North Carolina Governor’s Office and Duke Energy are each offering up to $25,000 for information to solve the case, making for a $100,000 reward. Sheriff Ronnie Fields said deputies have looked into hundreds of leads but the agency hasn’t yet announced any arrests or publicly identified any suspects.
One man told WRAL that he heard “about 20 shots” at a substation in West End on North Carolina 211 around the same time the shots were reportedly fired. The area went black about 30 minutes after the shots were fired, according to the man.
Duke Energy hasn’t answered questions about surveillance cameras at the substation, but a spokesperson said the company planned more than $500 million in improvements to increase security across its network.
“Really, since the time that the substation attacks occurred, even as we were responding to those, we were already beginning to gather information about the event,” Jeff Brooks said. “Lessons learned that we can apply to strengthen our existing multi-layered security strategy.”
Anyone with information about the Moore County substation attacks is asked to call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or the Moore County Sheriff’s Office at 910-947-4444.
