Catch Me if You Can, San Juan Islanders

He's like a backwoods Frank Abagnale, Jr., perhaps with a touch of Jason Bourne thrown in. Colton Harris-Moore, a Camano Island teenager whom authorities simply cannot catch, is being accused of new string of burglaries and thefts in the San Juan Islands. Harris-Moore has already served time in juvenile facilities for a number of offenses, and, police allege, has taught himself to fly, perhaps using flight manuals purchased with stolen credit cards.

Cumming believes Harris-Moore showed up in the San Juans last November, when he allegedly stole a Cessna 182 from an Orcas Island hangar. The teen is suspected of flying the single-engine plane to Eastern Washington, where he made a "hard landing" on the Yakama Indian Reservation.

On Sept. 11, Harris-Moore allegedly stole an experimental aircraft from Friday Harbor and flew it to Orcas Island, where it, too, made a "hard landing."

Harris-Moore walked out of a Renton juvenile detention facility in 2008 before completing his sentence, and has thus been a fugitive since then. Now Orcas Island has instituted a manhunt. It's something that didn't work out too well for Camano Island this time:

Last July, the 6-foot-5-inch teen returned to Camano Island and was involved in a police pursuit that ended when he crashed a stolen Mercedes-Benz into the back of the Elger Bay Grocery. He ran off and despite efforts by professional man hunters, the teen eluded capture.

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He was quite athletic and outran the officer and outmaneuvered him into a wooded area," Cumming said. "He laughed out loudly when he realized he was successful escaping from that officer."

One of the few times police were able to catch him--when he was 15--was by posing as pizza guys:

Deputies noticed a dozen pizza boxes at an abandoned campsite. So the next time Harris-Moore phoned in an order, during a visit to his mother's trailer, a deputy grabbed some pizza boxes, attached a pizza-delivery dome to the roof of an unmarked patrol car and knocked on the door.

In that same Seattle Times article from 2007, neighbors allege Harris-Moore had a pretty rough go of things growing up in his mom's trailer. And obviously it's no good to have people stealing stuff, crashing Benzes into groceries, or joy-flying planes (if indeed he is doing that). And this could end badly for a number of parties. But, man, it would make a hell of a movie.