Philly police searching for suspect who cut Xfinity fiber-optic lines on Super Bowl Sunday

Philadelphia police on Tuesday said they are searching for a suspect who is believed to have cut fiber-optic lines in the city’s Kensington section causing an outage for around 17,000 Xfinity customers on Super Bowl Sunday.

Surveillance video shows a man on the afternoon of Feb. 12 parking a white, Ford four-door pickup truck on the 2700 block of Tulip Street, getting out and then inspecting the overhead wires.

After cutting what police said were five major fiber-optic data lines hours before the Eagles were set to take on the Kansas City Chiefs, the man gestures and appears to say something in the direction of the wires and then returns to his truck.

Police said they responded to the reported vandalism around 4:45 p.m. The resulting outage affected about 17,000 customers in the surrounding neighborhoods and police said the cost of the damage to the equipment was around $10,000.

That evening, Xfinity reported on social media that service had been restored to “many customers” before the game began.

Anyone with information about the incident can call or text police at 215-686-TIPS.