Gardiner glad bandit caught

A Washington teenager accused in a series of international crimes was captured Sunday in the Bahamas, and the local man whose $340,000 Cessna T182T airplane was stolen last year from its hangar at the Boundary County Airport is relieved the so-called “Barefoot Bandit,” Colton A. Harris-Moore, is in custody.

“I'm happy they got him,” Patrick Gardiner, Porthhill, said. “It's great for the protection of the public, as I believe him to be a very dangerous person.”

After his escape from a juvenile half-way house in Renton, Wash., where he was serving a three-year sentence after pleading guilty to three counts of burglary in 2008, Harris-Colton is the prime suspect in a string of audacious crimes in Washington, Canada, Idaho, Oregon, South Dakota and Nebraska, stealing boats, cars and airplanes, breaking into homes and businesses to steal food, sometimes leaving behind bare foot prints marked in chalk and “Cya,” or “see ya” beside them.

Colton-Harris was taken into custody early Sunday morning after the security director of Romora Bay Resort and Marina, on Harbour Island in the Bahamas, saw an armed and barefoot man running up a dock and stealing a boat, which he soon beached in shallow waters. Bahamian authorities, alerted immediately after the siting, were able to disable the boat by shooting out its engines. Harris-Moore is suspected of flying to the Bahamas in a Cessna airplane he allegedly stole from a locked hanger at an airport in Bloomington, Indiana.

It is believed he learned to fly, albeit poorly, on video flight simulators.

Gardiner's plane was stolen at about 5:45 a.m. Sept. 29, 2009, and was found abandoned and crash-landed in a field near Granite Falls, Wash., a few days later. Last Tuesday, a federal judge in Washington unsealed a federal indictment for that theft after DNA evidence recovered from the aircraft linked Harris-Moore to the theft.

“Because of that indictment, I believe U.S. prosecutors in Washington will be the first to get him when he's returned to U.S. custody,” Gardiner said.

Harris-Moore was extradited back to the United States Tuesday after pleading guilty to a minor offense in the Bahamas.