'Barefoot Bandit' Sentenced to 6 ½ Years
The notorious international criminal "Barefoot Bandit" Colton Harris-Moore was sentenced Friday in a Seattle federal court to 6 and-a-half years in prison for a slue of high-profile crimes that included stealing planes and breaking into homes.
Moore became known as the barefoot bandit after he reportedly committed a series of 100 crimes without shoes.
"I now know a crime that took place overnight will take years to recover from," Harris told the federal court Friday, as he apologized to victims of his crimes in a 5 minute statement he read aloud to the court.
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At Friday's trial, Harris admitted that he is "lucky to be alive" and said that he wanted to "make a difference in this world, legally."
Within Harris-Moore's two-year crime spree, police believe the 20-year-old American carried out a series of 100 thefts.
The crime spree ended in July 2010 when police caught the young "Bandit" as he was attempting to evade capture on a stolen boat in the Bahamas.
Harris-Moore will be serving his federal sentence concurrently with the seven-year state sentence he was handed down Dec. 2011. As part of his plea deal, he could get out of jail by his 26th birthday.
The young man experienced a tumultuous upbringing with an absentee drug abusing father and an alcoholic mother that left him fending for himself by the age of seven.
His attorneys pleaded with the court Friday to consider his upbringing when determining his sentencing and argued that the young man had a low-risk of re-offending.
At Harris-Moore's December hearing, Judge Vicki Churchill told the court that his case was a "tragedy in many ways" but also said it was a "triumph of the human spirit in other ways."
According to reports, he is currently applying to college in hopes to earn a degree in aeronautical engineering.
