Catch me if you can: 'Barefoot bandit' eludes US police

[demoleft]

AFP - Eighteen-year-old Colton Harris-Moore is achieving folk hero status as the "Barefoot Bandit" in the US and Canada after a string of burglaries and dare-devil escapes from the law.

Romanticized 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 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 following year and his legend began to grow.

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 filled with loot.

source: afp, http://www.france24.com/en/node/4956692

damn! who's this guy?
in the era of electronic detecting devices and omniscient satellites - great stuff for a story or a script.

[depakid]

1. Interesting that this case is getting much more play abroad than in the states

Catch me if you can: barefoot teen delinquent becomes internet idol


Definitive image . . . a photo of Colton Harris-Moore which police found on a stolen digital camera they recovered.
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THERE is something about Colton Harris-Moore that polarises opinion. To the 13,253 members of his Facebook fan club, he is a new Jesse James (without the murders). To those with a literary bent, he has a touch of the Sundance Kid or Huckleberry Finn. But to the many victims of his burglaries around the north-west coast of the US and into Canada, he is a no-good thieving scoundrel.

His main claim to fame is that he's brilliant at evading arrest. For the past 20 months he has been on the run, hiding out no one quite knows where, but many suspect deep in the woods that carpet this wild region. Wanted posters bearing his face have been scattered around the island where he grew up in Puget Sound, north of Seattle, where he has committed many of the more than 50 burglaries that are held against him.

With each sighting, the scale of his criminal activity has grown, as has his fame. He has gone from a troubled kid into an internet idol and a folklore hero.

On top of his accomplishments as a fugitive, two other features boom out about Harris-Moore. He is just 18. And as video footage and forensic evidence show, he carries out many of his escapades in bare feet.

Our tale starts on April 29, 2008, when our misunderstood hero-cum-hoodlum disappears from a halfway house where people on juvenile detention orders are reintroduced to society.

Harris-Moore was into the second of a three-year sentence for a previous rash of burglaries.

First stop: Elger Bay Cafe on Camano Island. It is just after midnight on July 18, 2008. Harris-Moore has been on the run for six weeks and a police officer is following a Mercedes that has been driving oddly. As the police car closes in, the driver screeches into the restaurant car park and jumps out of the moving car. The driver, who is identified as our criminal wunderkind, is spotted running into the woods.

A search of the car uncovers Harris-Moore's prized possessions: stolen credit cards, a GPS unit, a mobile phone and a camera from which is downloaded the portrait of him that has become his definitive image.

Next stop: the airport on Orcas Island, 60 kilometres north of Camano. It is November 12, 2008. Harris-Moore has now been on the lam, as they say in these parts, for more than six months. A burglar helps himself into a parked single-propeller plane and makes a getaway.

The plane is found 480 kilometres to the east, having made a crash landing on the Yakama Indian Reservation. Police have not revealed how they identified Harris-Moore as a suspect, but a telltale sign was the footprints discovered inside the aircraft, suggesting that the burglar had been reclining with his bare feet up like a lord in his manor.

Then on September 11 this year, another plane went missing, this time from Friday Harbour, an island further west. It, too, crash-landed, back on Orcas Island where the first plane had been swiped. After the crash, Harris-Moore was spotted walking away from the wreckage by a police officer, who, following well-established tradition, failed to apprehend the boy.

More: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/catch-me-if-you-can-barefoot-teen-delinquent-becomes-internet-idol-20091218-l5os.html

[demoleft]

2. you're right. it's an afp, indeed. and i did not find anything about it elsewhere. n/t

[Libertas1776]

5. Here's an article from the London Times...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6946030.ece

[Libertas1776]

3. Yeah, Rambo Jr.

is so romantic, until he actually kills someone, whether by accident or who knows...on purpose. I mean come on, he steals Cessna's and then crashes them (probably cause he doesn't know how to land), dives out of a moving Mercedes and lets it crash in to a propane tank, using the subsequent explosion as a diversion to get away. Don't get me wrong, that is probably the most bad ass thing I ever heard of, but it is still crazy. It's amazing that the police on both sides of the border can't find a 6' 5" barefoot teenage boy living in the woods. These are simply not the actions of someone in a sound state of mind.

And where the hell were you, mother dearest?! I love how she talks proudly of her son. Where the hell were you that he ended up in Juvenile Hall and eventually living in the woods as a fugitive? Let's see how proud you are when he crashes a Cessna into your house.

[Walk away]

4. Colton...now is the time to get a really good lawyer and a really good agent..

before anyone gets hurt. You will have a job for life just being yourself. If you get the right people before you are arrested they will help you cut a deal so that you will still be able to collect for the book and movie deals. Good luck!

[Libertas1776]

6. Let's hope that he is sane enough

to realize that.