More than a dozen lights are out at the end of Wonderwood Bridge in Jacksonville, leaving drivers and pedestrians crossing in near-total darkness after thieves repeatedly stripped copper wiring from the span. The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office has reported that more than $120,000 worth of copper wiring has been stolen from the bridge, and residents who live nearby say they're increasingly afraid to use it.
Megan McGowan, who has lived a block away from the bridge for four years, told Action News Jax that driving over the dark bridge with her children every day is scary. She said that at the top of the span, she can only make out approaching cars by their headlights. Action News Jax observed open, exposed electrical boxes on both sides of the bridge during its reporting.
John Sternad, another neighbor, said the darkness has come and gone for years and that he worries about people walking across the bridge at night. He said he won't walk it himself unless he's armed, telling the station he fears someone could rob or kill him there. The outages stem from theft of copper, aluminum and wiring that powers the bridge's lighting system, according to the station's report.
A Years-Long Pattern of Theft
A police report reviewed by Action News Jax described multiple theft incidents on the bridge, including one in 2024 and another in January 2026. A separate police report from April named the City of Jacksonville as the victim of grand theft exceeding $100,000. JEA told the outlet it did not know whether the bridge lights were currently on and directed questions to the City of Jacksonville, which said it is still investigating the lighting issue and in turn referred the station to the Florida Department of Transportation.
FDOT said it has replaced wiring on the bridge over the years and confirmed that copper wire theft has been an ongoing challenge on Wonderwood Bridge since 2024, per the same account. The agency said its maintenance crews investigate the cause of lighting outages and report incidents to the appropriate law enforcement agency whenever evidence of theft or attempted theft turns up.
Switching to Aluminum to Deter Thieves
FDOT said it worked with the local municipality to replace much of the copper wiring serving the bridge's lighting with aluminum wiring in 2025, since aluminum carries significantly less scrap value than copper and is intended to deter future theft. That strategy isn't new to Florida roadways — a decade ago, a contractor working with FDOT replaced stolen copper with cheaper aluminum on light poles elsewhere in the state specifically to discourage thieves, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Despite that effort, FDOT identified damage on Wonderwood Bridge tied to an attempted theft as recently as September 8, 2026, per the agency's statement. The agency also said attempted wiring theft can cause dangerous damage involving high-voltage lines even when no wire is actually stolen, since those attempting the theft may not know what type of wiring they've accessed until after they've already damaged the electrical system.
Deterrents in Place, But Outages Keep Recurring
FDOT said it has implemented deterrents including labeling electrical pull boxes, installing stronger locks, placing surveillance cameras at specific locations, and making electrical boxes harder to access. Even so, the agency acknowledged that repairs alone cannot prevent intentional damage, and that attempted theft and vandalism can cause recurring outages even after crews fix the problem. FDOT said it will continue working with partners to repair the damage and maintain the infrastructure going forward.
The pattern on Wonderwood Bridge mirrors what's happening elsewhere in Florida and beyond. In Pensacola, police said roughly 100,000 feet of copper worth about a quarter-million dollars was stolen from bridge light poles and interstate highways, leaving the Barrancas Bridge over Bayou Chico dark for months, according to FOX10 News. In Milwaukee, officials said nearly 250 copper-wire thefts caused more than $830,000 in damage to the city's streetlight system, per TMJ4. Thieves are increasingly cutting through fiber-optic cables to reach copper, officials told Spectrum News, which reported California alone logged nearly 6,300 telecommunications theft and vandalism incidents in 2025 — more than double the number in Texas.
The stakes of a dark bridge or streetlight are not merely theoretical. The South Florida Sun Sentinel reported that officials estimated 300 to 400 light poles in Broward and Palm Beach counties had been vandalized since 2012, and that copper thieves who disabled nearby streetlights were partly blamed for contributing to the 2011 death of a 52-year-old pedestrian in Miami. Florida law already addresses this kind of theft directly: state statutes on the books, per the Florida Senate, include Section 812.141 covering offenses involving critical infrastructure and tampering, and Section 812.145 specifically targeting theft of copper or other nonferrous metals.
For now, residents near Wonderwood Bridge say they just want the lights back on. McGowan said neighbors want the bridge lights restored so drivers can actually see where they're going — a concern that carries extra weight with daylight saving time ending this coming Saturday, October 31, when evening commutes will fall into darkness even earlier.
