Authorities say plane that may have been taken by ‘barefoot burglar’ skirted Olympic air space

Feds say stolen plane skirted Olympic air space

SEATTLE — An airplane that may have been stolen by an elusive teen bandit drew plenty of attention from federal officials as it skirted a flight zone set up for the Vancouver Olympics.

But it never entered the restricted airspace during its erratic flight Wednesday night — and that might have ensured that whoever was flying it got away when the aircraft landed at Orcas Island airport.

San Juan County Sheriff Bill Cumming said Friday the stolen plane and a burgled grocery store on the island appear to be the work 18-year-old Colton Harris-Moore. The suspected “barefoot burglar” is wanted in scores of break-ins around Western Washington since he escaped from a halfway house in April 2008.

Last September, after a stolen small plane crash-landed at the same airport, authorities said Harris-Moore was caught on surveillance video breaking into a grocery store.

He’s also suspected of crash-landing a stolen plane from Idaho near Granite Falls a few weeks later.

The most recent stolen plane, a Cirrus SR22, was taken from an airport in Skagit County on Wednesday and appeared on radar around 11:30 p.m., Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer said.

Officials did not know it was stolen, but watched it closely because the pilot was using the wrong transponder code for approaching the restricted airspace. They lost interest when it dropped off the radar near Orcas Island, on the edge of the zone.

The plane apparently did not arouse enough suspicion for FAA workers to contact the San Juan County sheriff’s office, Kenitzer said.

Real-time information that the plane was headed for the Orcas airport “may have been helpful” in catching the pilot, Cumming said.

Instead, the sheriff didn’t learn about the plane until it was discovered at the airport on Thursday morning.

By that time, someone had already broken into the Homegrown Market, taken $1,200 in cash, cleaned out a dessert tray, wrecked the surveillance system and drawn cartoonish chalk-outline feet all over the floor.