Harris Moore, Colton

Harris Moore was born and raised on the island of Camano near Seattle . Two years after his birth, Colton's parents, who lived in an unregistered marriage , divorced, and Colton was further raised by his drinking mother ^[1] alone. The second, this time legal, Colton’s mother’s husband died of drug abuse when Colton was seven years old. Earlier, Colton was considered a difficult-to-educate child, and at the age of seven he first ran away from home and wandered in the woods for several days, earning his livelihood from small thefts from neighboring houses, shops and schools ^[2] .

In 2003 , shortly before his twelfth birthday, Harris-Moore was immediately arrested several times over the course of a few weeks for theft, and was also sentenced by the court to fines and community service. Two years later, he was arrested for attempting to hack into a library, and in 2006 was suspected of stealing a credit card and withdrawing cash from it in the amount of $ 3,700. When the threat of another arrest loomed over him, Harris-Moore hid in the forest and lived there for several months, earning money by burglary from houses and cars. In the end, the police managed to detain Colton red-handed when on February 9, 2007 he again tried to rob a private house. The court sentenced him to three years in prison. Colton spent the first year of his imprisonment in a general prison, but at the beginning of 2008 he was transferred to a less guarded correctional institution for juvenile delinquents on the island of Camano for good behavior. From there, he managed to escape on April 29, 2008, breaking a window in the bedroom.

Despite the large-scale search campaign organized by the local police, Colton was never able to be caught during his stay on the island, although he did thefts, robberies and thefts (which, apparently, were not an end in itself, but a means of subsistence and mobility) became almost an everyday occurrence - for example, more than 40 burglaries attributed to Colton were announced on Kamano within a month after his escape. A significant part of Harris-Moore's crimes was theft of private vehicles - for the most part, bicycles and cars , but sometimes even boats or light aircraft ^[3] . At the same time, Harris-Moore used stolen cars exclusively for personal movement - this allowed him to easily change his place of residence and commit crimes (mainly, as before, burglary) in those places where he was not yet known.

For all the months he was at liberty, Harris Moore allegedly committed theft not only in his home state of Washington , but also outside it, including in the states of Idaho , Illinois and South Dakota , as well as near the border with Canada and on the Canadian border territory. He lived mainly in the forests, periodically penetrating other people's houses, sometimes just to get food, swim in the bathroom or play on the computer. In the summer of 2008, once again breaking into the store, Colton barely managed to get away from the police, while he hid barefoot, leaving behind a footprint. Since then, the nickname “Barefoot Bandit” has taken root, with which Colton was dubbed the media coverage of the search campaign.

After Colton hijacked a Cessna 182 light-engine private plane in Washington state and managed to fly several hundred kilometers to Yakima on November 12, the landing was so hard that the car was actually wrecked, although Colton himself was not seriously injured and managed to escape before the arrival of the police - he was put on the federal wanted list both in the United States and Canada, which, however, did not prevent him from successfully hiding from the persecution for more than a year and a half and, incidentally, hijacking several more planes. It is noteworthy that Colton did not possess piloting practice before, but had only theoretical knowledge in this area, probably obtained from computer video games or from instructions obtained on the Internet ^[3] .

In June 2010, Harris-Moore managed to get to the Bahamas by another hijacked plane. After a severely damaged Cessna was found by local police in the coastal waters of the Abaco Islands and house robberies became more frequent, Harris-Moore was put on the wanted list in the Bahamas. On July 11, Harris-Moore hijacked a motor boat on the island of Eleuthera , on which he later claimed to flee to Cuba or to the Turks and Caicos Islands . The police managed to get on his trail, and Colton after the chase, during which the police hit a boat, was arrested and transferred to FBI agents ^[4] , and subsequently extradited to the United States ^[1] .

The total material damage caused by Harris-Moore as a result of more than a hundred of thefts and thefts committed by him is estimated at about 1.4 million dollars ^[5] . Colton fully admitted his deed. In December 2011, a court sentenced him to seven and a half years in prison ^[6] .

After his escape from prison in 2008, Colton gradually gained fame throughout North America through reports from the American media. At the same time, a large number of ordinary people sympathized with him, taking to his heart Colton's youth, his difficult childhood, as well as his adventurism and dodging, which allowed him to hide from law enforcement agencies even after being put on the federal wanted list. For the most impressionable, mostly young Internet users, Colton Harris-Moore turned into a kind of idol even before his arrest, as evidenced by the many pages wound in his name on social networks (for example, Harris-Moore's Facebook network alone as of July 2010 gained over 85,000 supporters ^[7] ). Usually Harris-Moore fans consider him, despite the crimes committed, innocent, worry about him and demand his release from custody. Many Harris-Moore pages on social networks use his photos, which Colton himself shot in July 2008 on a stolen digital camera , which was later found by the police. There is also a Colton Harris-Moore fan club on the Internet ^[8] .

In August 2011, it became known that Harris-Moore sold the film company 20th Century Fox the rights to film his adventures. The script will be presumably by Dustin Lance Black , and the contract amount is over $ 1 million ^[9] ; at the same time, Harris-Moore undertook to pay the entire amount received to pay off the debt to the victims ^[10] .

• Insolence Award , Lenta.ru , August 12, 2011
• Harris-Moore Biography
• Colton Facebook Page