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R/£ Barefooted cheek of teenage bandit
December 28, 2009 Edition 2
SEATTLE: Colton Harris-Moore, 18, is achieving folk hero status as "the Barefoot Bandit" in the US and Canada after a string of burglaries and daredevil escapes from the law.
Romanticised by some as a latter-day Billy the Kid figure, but regarded by others as a common thief, Harris-Moore has a criminal record stretching back to when he was just 12 and had a penchant for kicking off his shoes before fleeing.
Caught in 2007 and sentenced to detention in a halfway house near Seattle, the teenager from Camano Island, north of Seattle, escaped the next year and his legend grew.
Shortly after breaking out, he was being pursued driving a stolen Mercedes-Benz near his mother's home when he jumped from the moving vehicle and ran into the woods, leaving police with a wrecked car full of loot.
Among stolen possessions recovered was a digital camera he used to take a self-portrait which, with self-assured smirk, has become the public face of a teenage robber who has now become an internet idol.
Burglaries continued on Camano Island, and while Harris-Moore kept out of sight, police and neighbours
were sure he was behind the thefts. Within months he was suspected of more than 50 burglaries across three counties. For the next year, Harris- Moore, a 1.98-m giant, was a ghost to police.
Then, in September, on the remote San Juan Islands on the border between Washington State and Vancouver Island, he was spotted on a surveillance tape during a robbery. While stealing cash from the ATM machine of another business the same night, he cut himself, leaving traces of blood that were matched to his DNA.
A San Juan County sheriff's deputy said he nearly caught Harris-Moore in the woods and had him in his flashlight before the suspect "virtually vaporised in front of me".
He heard him laughing loudly from the woods when he realised he had eluded him. The legend took on a new
dimension in October when a private plane crashed near the Cascade Mountains east of Seattle. It had been stolen in Idaho, near where a rash of burglaries had occurred.
Searchers never found the pilot, but a few days later an intruder was reported at a nearby home. When police arrived, the suspect ran into the woods and fired at them. They never found the assailant, but investigators found bare footprints leading up to the door and inside the Idaho hangar where the stolen plane had been stored.
Seattle radio personality Bob Rivers had his plane stolen and it was later found wrecked in a field almost 320km away. "The thief broke into a locked hangar, apparently found some keys in the hangar, stole the plane," Rivers said. "All indications are that Colton Harris-Moore is the prime suspect."
Harris-Moore's mother, Pam Koehler, didn't doubt he could be a pilot. "He's smart. He took an IQ test a few years ago and he's three points below Einstein," she said. "Ihope to hell he stole those planes. I would be so proud."
Since October nothing has been heard of him, but a Hollywood producer wants to make a movie of his life and compared him to Leonardo DiCaprio's role in Catch Me If You Can. Harris-Moore has a cult following, including a fan club on Facebook. But the man named Time Magazine's "most wanted teenage thief" for 2009 is not so popular with authorities.
Sheriff Mark Brown, who has dealt with criminal pursuits of the boy since he was 11, growled, "He is an adult felon! I will not have him made into some kind of folk hero." Sapa-AFP
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