LAKEWOOD – A 9-year-old boy who didn’t like his suburban Tacoma home stole a car, got caught, was returned home to his mother, then ran away again and flew to San Antonio with a plane change in Phoenix before he was arrested, authorities said.
Investigators and Southwest Airlines officials were trying to determine how Semaj Booker, who was trying to get to his grandfather in Texas, made his way through security and onto the airplane.
In a statement Wednesday, Southwest Airlines said a young man approached the ticket counter at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport requesting a boarding pass and saying his mother was already in the boarding area.
“The young man’s information matched a paid, ticketless reservation for the flight. Based on the information he gave us, he was issued a boarding pass,” the airline said, adding that he was not listed as an “unaccompanied minor” because he told the ticket agent he was 12 years old.
He made it through airport security in Seattle and Phoenix, and hopped two separate flights before gate agents in San Antonio stopped him short of his Dallas destination, police said.
Airline employees stopped Semaj from boarding another flight from San Antonio to Dallas when he couldn’t explain why he didn’t have the proper paperwork or a boarding pass, said David Hebert, spokesman for the San Antonio International Airport.
Airline staff turned the boy over to airport police after speaking with him at length and “not getting anywhere,” Hebert said.
The 80-pound, 4-foot-9 fourth-grader, held in juvenile detention Tuesday in San Antonio, was “incredibly motivated to get to Texas,” Lakewood police Lt. David Guttu told The News Tribune of Tacoma. “He doesn’t want to live in Washington state.”
Guttu told The Associated Press that the Pierce County prosecutor planned to seek a juvenile arrest warrant for Semaj, accusing him of “felony elude” and possession of stolen properties. The charges would be sent to San Antonio, but Guttu wasn’t sure what the next step would be.
“We really don’t extradite juveniles. So that’s going to be interesting. We’ll see what happens,” he said. “The police department’s main job is to coordinate the warrant and coordinate his return as a missing juvenile.”
The boy’s mother, Sakinah Booker, told The News Tribune he dislikes the neighborhood where the family lives and is afraid of a sex offender who lives nearby.
“He does not like it here at all,” she said.
Guttu said the boy’s odyssey began Sunday when he stole an Acura that was left running outside a neighbor’s house, only to be spotted by police near the interchange of I-5 and Highway 512.
Police pursued young Booker on Highway 512 at 80 to 90 mph until he took an exit and the engine blew, after which the car went over a curb and coasted into a tree.
He refused to come out of the car, so officers broke a window to unlock a door and immediately recognized him as a frequent runaway and car thief, Guttu said. Last month he also crashed a stolen car before being caught by police in Tacoma, and more recently he was caught in Seattle in a stolen car that had run out of gas, his mother said.
She believes he learned to drive from playing video games on a PlayStation.
Pierce County Deputy Prosecutor Fred Wist said Tuesday he had not decided whether to file charges in the car theft and police chase Sunday.
“It is very seldom that we see kids this young,” he said.
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