Colton Harris-Moore
Colton Harris-Moore (born March 22, 1991 in Camano Island , Washington ) is an American criminal . He was wanted and eventually arrested for stealing a small airplane, multiple cars, boats, and over 100 break-ins and thefts in the United States and Canada . From 2008 to 2010, the then juvenile criminal was on the run. In public he was known as "The Barefoot Bandit" and "Barefoot Burglar" (German: The barefoot bandit / burglar).
Life
Childhood and youth
Colton Harris-Moore was born on Camano Island, Washington , as the only son of Pam Kohler and Gordon Moore . The parents, who were never married, separated when Colton was two years old; the boy grew up with his mother. Still, his father took the maintenance and welfare obligations seriously. Pam Kohler married a dairy farmer shortly after the split, but he died of a heroin overdose when Colton was seven years old.
As a child, Harris-Moore made his own rules. He broke from home and often hid in the Iceland County forests for days . He skipped school more than once. He also committed multiple break-ins, including stealing a laptop from a mortgage bank , and a walkie-talkie and video camera from Stanwood Middle School . He then told the school principal that he did not know how to stop stealing and that he had to. Still, Colton was a boy who, Sheriff Brian Legasse said in an interview in 2007, was very intelligent and lovable.
His criminal record began to fill in 2003 when the twelve-year-old was sentenced to 11 days of youth detention and 16 hours of community service for possession of stolen property. Only a few months later, when evidence was found that he had damaged several buildings in Snohomish County , he was sentenced to an additional ten days in prison. After robbing a kiosk, he was fined $ 100. Colton Harris-Moore committed all of these crimes before his twelfth birthday. In 2005 he broke into the Stanford Library ; again he had to answer in court.
In July 2006, Colton was suspected of having stolen a credit card and withdrawn $ 3,700 in cash. He stayed away from the court hearing and fled into the woods. It was seven months before the police could catch him. With another stolen credit card, he got hold of essential utensils, such as a tent or groceries, and lived in the forest. He had also broken into houses and cars and thus financed his living. The arrest on the night of February 9, 2007 was red-handed when Colton had just entered a house. Colton Harris-Moore was sentenced to three years imprisonment for various offenses. After being a part of that sentence in a maximum security prison had served, he was on good behavior after Griffin Home , a designed for juvenile offenders facility in Renton ( King County , Washington), transferred. But on April 29, 2008, he broke a window in his bedroom and disappeared into illegality.
Escape
In the month after Colton's escape from Renton alone, 41 break-ins of all kinds were reported from Camano Island, the home of the fugitive. Although the sheriff started a large-scale search operation, it was unsuccessful. The house of Carol Star, Colton's mother's neighbor, was broken into three times - her Mercedes-Benz car was stolen. The deputy almost succeeded . To seize County Sheriff Colton: Shortly before midnight on July 17, 2008, he discovered the stolen vehicle near a drugstore , behind the wheel of the fugitive. At the last moment Colton managed to jump out of the moving vehicle and flee into the nearby forest.
In Carol Star's car, the police discovered a digital camera with numerous pictures taken by Colton, showing him in a stolen robe with the headphones of an equally illegally obtained Apple iPod in his ear . Those recordings went around the world. In the meantime, in addition to people who viewed the youth's activities as criminal offenses, groups also formed who described Colton as a stupid boy and some of whom admired him for his lawless life.
A short time later, Colton broke into a home improvement store on Orcas Island . Since he walked barefoot from the scene and a footprint could be secured by the police, Colton was nicknamed Barefoot Burglar in public . In the early summer of 2008, Colton broke into numerous stores and shops in Counties Island and San Juan . A bank, a café and numerous condominiums and single-family houses were also among his looted properties. Since he always climbed the roofs and entered the buildings through skylights , he bypassed the alarm systems.
Although Colton had never received flying lessons - it is believed that Colton acquired the skills through video games - he stole a Cessna 182 on November 12, 2008 , with which he reached Yakima , over 300 miles away via the Cascade Range . Here he managed a crash landing in which the aircraft was totally destroyed. The property damage was $ 150,000. Colton left the scene of the crash unharmed. Immediately thereafter, Colton was put on the wanted lists of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police .
Almost a year dipped below Colton could until the investigators find that he September 29, 2009, a Cessna from a hangar in Bonners Ferry in Boundary County ( Idaho had stolen) and with this 418 km far to the Granite Falls (Snohomish County, Washington ) was reached. There he ran out of fuel and had to make an emergency landing. It was the same on February 11, 2010, when he had flown from Anacortes to Orcas Island on board a Cirrus SR22 .
For all these months Colton was up to mischief along the US-Canadian border. Since he also entered Canadian territory with his flights and thefts, the Canadian side also searched intensively for the boy.
Colton Harris-Moore caused property damage of $ 1.5 million on his forays. He had long since passed the step from petty criminal to felon when he broke into a police car belonging to the Deputy Sheriff of Island County in June 2009, armed himself with an assault rifle and ammunition. He also stole beer and food as well as another handgun from an airfield in Creston in the Canadian province of British Columbia .
arrest
After over two years of police searching for Colton Harris-Moore, they got lucky on July 11, 2010. Colton had made it to the Bahamas in a stolen plane . There he stole a speedboat on the island of Eleuthera shortly before sunrise on July 11, 2010. The police immediately followed suit and shot the boat unfit for use. Shortly after that, Colton's handcuffs clicked. He was brought to Nassau and extradited to the United States on July 21. On December 16, 2011, Harris-Moore was sentenced to seven years in prison by a US court.
reception
Colton Harris-Moore was soon idolized. He has his own fan club , his face adorns T-shirts and several fans wrote or dedicated songs to him.
Filmmakers Andrew and Adam Gray made the documentary Fly Colt Fly about Harris-Moore in 2014 .
The young adult novel I don't get it by the French writer Pascale Maret is based on the life of Harris-Moore.
literature
- Guido Mingels: Fly, Colton, fly . Der Spiegel 49/2011.
Web links
- Detailed biography (CrimeLibrary)
- Official website - fan club
- Video of the arrest (YouTube)
- Juvenile Delinquency: Jesse James 2.0 (SpOn, October 10, 2009)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Barefoot bandit has to go to prison for seven years ; Spiegel Online , December 17, 2011
- ^ Website of Harris-Moore's fan club
- ↑ Collection of different songs about the Barefoot Bandit
- ^ IMDb: Fly Colt Fly
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Harris-Moore, Colton |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Barefoot Burglar |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American criminal |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 22, 1991 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Camano Island , Washington |