Semaj Booker - a persistent, creative and most publicized 9-year-old runaway kid in the history of the Pacific Northwest - hates Seattle so much that he has stolen cars and tried to run away from home nine times.Semaj can drive a stolen car 90 mph while leading a police chase, as he demonstrated Sunday. The chase ended only after he blew the engine on a 1986 Acura swiped from a neighbor who had left the car unlocked and running. The boy then refused to get out of the car, which he had crashed into a tree.
Police had to break a car window, grab him and take him back to his mother's apartment in Lakewood, a gritty working-class suburb near Tacoma. This was his third stolen car in the past month, according to his mother, who said he learned how to drive playing video games.
The morning after the car crash, Semaj came up with a new, improved runaway scheme - one that would transport him to Texas free of charge, get him on all-news cable television and prompt a local congressman to ask angry questions about how a kid could outfox a major airline and slip through federal airport security.
At the Sea-Tac airport, Semaj did not have a reservation, nor did he have a means of buying a ticket. But he single-handedly conned Southwest Airlines and the federal Transportation Security Administration into allowing him to board a flight to San Antonio via Phoenix!
It was while in transit in Texas that Semaj ran out of loopholes. Trying to change planes in San Antonio for a flight to Dallas, he could not produce information that matched a reservation. Southwest Airlines said the boy could not give them the name of an adult who knew that he was supposed to be on the flight.
Link & Image: WashingtonPost
Tags: Runaway | Kid | Seattle
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