Peninsula Daily News and news sources
LOPEZ ISLAND — The Port Angeles Coast Guard sent a helicopter to help the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office and the Seattle Coast Guard reclaim a boat that the sheriff believes could have been stolen by the elusive teen bandit Colton Harris-Moore.
Sheriff William Cumming told KOMO-TV that he is investigating whether Harris-Moore, now 19, stole that boat, which was found floating unmanned off Camano Island.
Mike Allen, a dispatcher for the Port Angeles Coast Guard, said when he was dispatching the Coast Guard’s H-65 Dolphin helicopter crew to the scene he got a call about a stolen boat.
“It turns out they were the same boat,” he said.
The boat was reported missing from a Lopez Island private marina.
Cumming said the theft may be linked to another boat stolen from a San Juan Island home two days ago.
The San Juan Island boat was taken from a home SEmD which was also burglarized SEmD and that boat was piloted to Lopez Island, where it was abandoned along the shore, investigators said.
Cumming said detectives from San Juan and Island counties are coordinating their investigations and information.
If Harris-Moore is back on Camano Island, it will be a return to the site where he first gained notoriety three years ago.
Harris-Moore was arrested in 2007 on investigation of several burglaries on Camano Island and was sentenced to three years behind bars.
After about a year in a juvenile detention facility in Renton he escaped through a window and has been on the run since.
Harris-Moore was nicknamed the “Barefoot Bandit” after allegedly committing some break-ins without wearing shoes.
He also is a suspect in the theft of four small planes, all of which were crash-landed.
Police suspect he also has stolen boats and luxury cars and broken into dozens of homes and businesses as far away as Idaho and in Canada.
His total haul may top $1.5 million, officials said, according to KOMO-TV.
