Colton Harris-Moore, a 19-year-old accused of stealing several airplanes since leaving a group home near Seattle in 2008, is now suspected in the theft of a Cessna Corvalis that went missing from its locked hangar in Indiana and showed up in the Bahamas on Sunday, more than 1,000 miles away. The airplane was ditched in shallow offshore waters around 7 p.m., but when emergency workers arrived, there was nobody inside and no sign of injury. Harris-Moore has become something of a celebrity on Facebook. He never took lessons and apparently taught himself to fly using manuals and flight simulators. He’s also suspected of stealing several speedboats and luxury cars, which together with the airplanes total about $3 million in value.
FBI Special Agent Steven Dean said the teenager has “turned from a regional nuisance into an international problem, if that is in fact him,” according to The Herald-Times, of Everett, Wash. “We want to get him,” Dean said. The FBI on Tuesday offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to Harris-Moore’s arrest. Bahamian police told the Herald-Times that about 11 hours after the Corvalis was ditched in the waters off the island of Abaco, a house on the island was broken into and a vehicle parked there was stolen.
