COUPEVILLE, Wash. — The youthful thief who rocketed to international notoriety as the “Barefoot Bandit” while he evaded police in pilfered cars, boats and planes during a two-year crime spree was sentenced Friday to more than seven years in a Washington state prison after pleading guilty to dozens of charges.
Colton Harris-Moore, now 20, showed no reaction as the sentence was delivered by a judge who took pity on his bleak upbringing at the hands of an alcoholic mother and a series of her convict boyfriends — a situation she described as a “mind-numbing absence of hope.”
“This case is a tragedy in many ways, but it’s a triumph of the human spirit in other ways,” said Island County Judge Vickie Churchill. “I could have been reading about the history of a mass murderer. I could have been reading about a drug abusive, alcoholic young man.”
Harris-Moore’s daring run from the law earned him global fame and a movie deal to help repay his victims after he flew a stolen plane from Indiana to the Bahamas in July 2010, crash-landed it and was arrested by Bahamian authorities in a hail of bullets.
The proceedings Friday consolidated cases against Harris-Moore in three Washington counties. He already has pleaded guilty to federal charges in Seattle and will be sentenced for those crimes early next year.
