'Barefoot Bandit' Colton Harris-Moore Eyed in Bahamas Plane Crash
Police say plane stolen from Indiana, crashed in Bahamas fits his M.O.
July 6, 2010— -- It appears even Washington state's notorious "Barefoot Bandit" needs a bit of a summer vacation.
Colton Harris-Moore, the 19-year-old suspected felon and cult hero, who police say has a penchant for stealing boats and planes, could be a suspect in the nabbing a Cessna 400 from a rural Indiana airport on Sunday. The plane crashed in the shallow waters off the Bahamian coast hours later.
The FBI Assistant Special Agent Steven Dean told ABCNews.com that they don't have concrete evidence that Harris-Moore was behind the theft, but it's likely.
"He was moving in that general area and he's stolen airplanes before and he's crash landed them like this," Dean said.
The FBI, which has been tracking Harris-Moore for about a year, is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
"He went from being a regional nuisance to an international problem," Dean said.
Monroe County Sheriff's Office Chief Michael Pershing said today that he didn't even know who Harris-Moore was or anything about his fabled exploits until they were tipped off by a police department in Illinois where authorities think the 19-year-old high school dropout may have stolen a car he used to drive to the airport in Indiana.
"There are similarities with M.O.'s that we've been advised of," Pershing said.
Pershing said they Google'd the teen and read about the dozens of thefts, break-ins and burglaries he's suspected of, mostly in the string of Pacific Northwest islands he hails from.
The hangar at the Monroe County Airport, where the Cessna was found missing has been processed for fingerprints, but Pershing said he was unaware if they'd been able to lift any full prints.
The Cessna 400, valued at about $600,000 and registered to a man named John Miller, was believed to be stolen sometime between 9:30 p.m. on Saturday and 6:30 a.m. on Sunday. Pershing said there was a sign of forced entry at the airport and that the door to the hangar where the plane was rolled out was left open.
Miller, he said, was unaware his plane was missing until the Coast Guard called to tell him the plane's beacon was emitting a signal off the coast of the Bahamas.
"We don't know the condition of the plane other than it was found in the water and there was no occupants when he found the aircraft," Pershing said. That end of the investigation is now headed up by the Royal Bahamas Police Force.
Dean said FBI agents already stationed in the Bahamas have been assisting the government in its investigation and believe strongly he's still in the Caribbean nation.
Though Harris-Moore is not an official suspect in Indiana, it could be further evidence that he's expanded his playground from the Pacific Northwest, where he spent two years on the run after escaping from a group home in April 2008.
Last month, police in Yankton, S.D., said they were eyeing the teen in an airport break-in and car theft case there, as well as a burglary that netted a description that partially matched Harris-Moore.
Police have named him as a suspect in a string of thefts in Illinois, Nebraska and Idaho, ABC's Seattle affiliate KOMO reported today.
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