‘Barefoot Bandit’ deported to U.S.

MIAMI – The American teenager who police call the “Barefoot Bandit” was deported to the United States on Tuesday, just hours after he pleaded guilty to a minor offense in the Bahamas.

Law enforcement officials escorted Colton Harris-Moore on a commercial flight to Miami to face prosecution for a two-year string of break-ins and plane thefts across the United States. The FBI took him off the plane and put him into a waiting car.

Officials said the 19-year-old convict was taken to a federal jail in Miami, where he is scheduled to have an initial court appearance today. It’s likely he will eventually be taken to Seattle, where he was indicted.

Earlier Tuesday, Harris-Moore pleaded guilty in the Bahamas to illegally entering the country. He had been arrested in the island country Sunday following a high-speed boat chase. The charge stemming from his alleged crash of a stolen plane on Great Abaco Island carried a $300 fine.

Authorities say he earned the “Barefoot Bandit” nickname by committing some crimes while shoeless, and in February he allegedly drew chalk-outline feet all over the floor of a grocery store during a burglary in Washington’s San Juan Islands.

Harris-Moore is suspected in about 70 property crimes across eight states and British Columbia, many of them in the bucolic islands of Washington state. He is accused of stealing a plane from an Indiana airport to fly to the Bahamas.