‘Barefoot Bandit’ deported to US

NASSAU - Colton Harris-Moore, the teenage fugitive known as the “Barefoot Bandit,” was deported to the United States on Tuesday evening, hours after pleading guilty to a single count of illegally landing an airplane in Nassau.

The New York Times quoted a US State Department official, as saying that Harris-Moore had escaped from a halfway house in Seattle more than two years ago, and was a suspect in scores of burglaries and boat, plane and credit card thefts across the United States.

The 19-year-old was captured in a boat chase here early Sunday after American authorities alerted local officials that he was wanted on a federal warrant and was believed to be in the Bahamas.

The police in the Bahamas had threatened to charge him with several crimes, including illegal possession of a firearm, but on Tuesday he was ordered only to pay a 300 dollar fine for the single charge of illegally landing.

Harris-Moore now faces many serious charges at home, including one federal charge of stealing an airplane in Idaho and transporting it across state lines, as well as state charges in dozens of other burglaries and thefts in the San Juan Islands of Washington State.

Moore would probably first have a hearing in South Florida, the closest jurisdiction to the Bahamas, and then would be transported to Washington. (ANI)