NEWARK — It would have been a penny-ante crime. But it could have cost Eric Vega his life.

The 42-year-old Newark man was walking along an elevated railroad structure near Roseville Avenue in the state’s largest city yesterday morning, looking for wire to steal, transit officials allege.

At 4:09 a.m., he raised a pair of bolt cutters and snipped a cable. He got an electric shock and fell 40-feet to the tracks below, NJ Transit spokeswoman Nancy Snyder said.

He survived, but transit officials say this is a cautionary tale. The overhead wire cut by Vega was a "static wire" with just 110 volts running through it, officials said. But the Catenary wire next to it carries 25,000 volts, which powers the trains, and is enough to kill.

There have been 24 reported thefts of wire along NJ Transit rail lines this year, Transit Police Chief Christopher Trucillo said, and the incidents are increasingly annoying for commuters and increasingly dangerous for criminals.

Vega remains in an induced coma at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, according to Trucillo, who said potential wire thieves run the risk of being struck by trains or suffering violent electric shocks every time they try to steal from railway property.

"We just want to highlight it’s a dangerous thing and it’s not an easy crime," he said." It’s not a victimless crime, and we take this very seriously because anybody that’s trespassing on the rails is a concern to us."

Trucillo said the thefts are happening all across the rails, from Newark to Pennsauken. Transit police have made five arrests this year in such incidents, said Trucillo, who said Vega was likely trying to steal the wire so he could pawn it at a scrapyard for petty cash.

Vega’s relatives declined to comment. Vega had been released from prison in January, according to state Department of Corrections records, after serving more than two years for assault, theft and resisting arrest charges stemming from a 2008 incident.

It’s unclear if Vega knew which wire was which, and Trucillo said a criminal’s lack of knowledge of Transit property could prove deadly.

"There’s also the probability that if they don’t have an awareness of how the Catenary system works, the result could be what we had last night, which was someone that came close to killing themselves," he said.

Staff Writer Vinessa Erminio contributed to this report.

