Tuesday, July 6, 2010

A Close Brush with a Barefoot Bandit

I’d heard it in passing, but never really paid any attention.  “The Barefoot Bandit” – it’s a catchy moniker assigned to a kid who escaped from some group home in Washington state.

Colton_Harris-Moore[1]

This boy, this 19 year old kid, has fled across the country, eluding police, stealing what he needs to survive. At times, it’s been the use of a bathtub. Other times, a vehicle.

A few times now, it’s even been aircraft.

Yep. Aircraft. Planes. This 19 year old, with no formal training, has managed to reach a point where on more than one occasion he has stolen an airplane, and successfully flown it to a new destination.

Over the holiday weekend, he apparently decided to steal one from here. From an airport where I spent much of my childhood. Where members of my family have made a living. From an airport that is a four-mile drive from my house, and it’s only that far because I have to circle all the way around it to get to it’s entrance. It’s maybe a mile and a half as the crow flies. MAYBE. Three houses and a wooded area.

The current assumptions are this – Colton Harris-Moore, a.k.a. "The Barefoot Bandit”, stole a vehicle in Illinois, which was found dumped in a church parking lot not far from the airport. (They haven’t released the name of the church that I’m aware of, but I think it’s a small church very close to where the kids’ attend school.) A few days after the discovery of the car, an aircraft was stolen from a hangar at our local airport, and crashed in shallow waters off the coast of the Bahamas.

He’s not hurt anyone physically so far, in fact, his wiki page indicated a bit of a giving heart when he stopped by a veterinarian’s office, but the idea that this kid was so close to my home, that he was able to steal a plane that I may well have seen fly past my house, it just leaves me a bit stunned. So, so many more thoughts in my head about this, but I won’t drag it all out.

So, that was the interesting thing that happened here over the holiday weekend. How about at your place?

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5 comments:

  1. I am gap-mouthed, slack-jawed reading this story-- we've covered this kid's antics for months now, and I find his story fascinating. This is an incredible anecdote!!!!

    ~Elizabeth

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  2. nothing that crazy! wowzers! I have never even heard about this kid. Might have to go look it up and see what its all about.. so crazy

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  3. holy cow! i've heard of this kid and can't believe he hasn't been caught yet. how crazy!?

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  4. I am slightly facinated by the fact that no one has caught him... Also the previous post on here I like your pics

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  5. Wow, thats nuts that it happened at that little bitty airport! I remember going there every year from the pancake breakfast and airplane rides...did you do those too?

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