This seems fake when you watch the family interview?
Colorado boy found hiding in garage, not in balloon
By Ann Gerhart
The Washington Post
A 6-year-old boy reportedly had climbed into a homemade helium balloon and was floating 7,000 feet above Colorado, at the mercy of the winds.
For hours on a workaday Thursday, a mesmerized America watched the shiny silvery disc spin slowly against a brilliant blue sky with puffy white clouds.
Emergency vehicles began trailing the balloon over two counties. The Air Force was contacted. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded some planes. And the gripped nation wondered: Was the boy in the balloon? Had he fallen out?
At last, the balloon floated down — a safe landing! — 50 miles from the Fort Collins home where it had been tethered.
But there was no boy.
And then, two hours later, he emerged from the attic in his home, where he had been hiding in fear.
The boy’s father, Richard Heene, said that the family was tinkering with the balloon Thursday and that he scolded his son Falcon for getting inside a battery compartment on the craft. He said Falcon’s brother Bradford, 10, had seen Falcon there before it took off, and that’s why they thought he was in the balloon when it rose into the sky.
But Falcon had fled after the scolding and was never in the balloon during its two-hour journey.
“I yelled at him. I’m really sorry I yelled at him,” Heene said as he hugged his son at a news conference Thursday.
“I was in the attic, and he scared me because he yelled at me,” Falcon said. “That’s why I went in the attic.”
Richard Heene denied that the whole thing was a big publicity stunt.
“That’s horrible after the crap we just went through,” he said. “No.”
But in a live interview with CNN, Falcon said he had heard his family calling his name.
“You did?” said the boy’s mother, Mayumi Heene.
“Why didn’t you come out?” Richard Heene asked.
Falcon answered, “You had said that we did this for a show.”Later, Richard Heene bristled when the family was asked to clarify and said he didn’t know what his son meant.
The family had appeared this year on “Wife Swap,” the ABC reality show where two mothers switch households for several days. On their episode, a risk-taking scientist swapped his wife with that from a safety-obsessed family.
Heene is an amateur scientist, he says on his MySpace page. In 2005, he “flew into Hurricane Wilma to take magnetic field measurements,” and “this year I rode a motorcycle into a mesocyclone.” He said he’d like to meet “real aliens from outer space and conduct a full interview with them.”
Thursday morning, Heene and two of his sons had been playing out back with the balloon when Bradford saw Falcon climb into a box on the bottom of the balloon, said Kathy Messick, a spokeswoman for the Larimer County sheriff.
The contraption took to the skies about 11 a.m. over northern Colorado. Within about 30 minutes, family members summoned authorities.
The Federal Aviation Administration began tracking the balloon through reports from pilots and air traffic control operations.
The Colorado Army National Guard scrambled an OH-58 Kiowa helicopter and a Black Hawk UH-60 to try to rescue the boy, possibly by lowering someone to the balloon. The helicopter flights alone cost about $14,500. The National Guard also was working with pilots of ultralight aircraft on the possibility of putting weights on the homemade craft to bring it down.
Colorado boy found hiding in garage, not in balloon
By Ann Gerhart
The Washington Post
A 6-year-old boy reportedly had climbed into a homemade helium balloon and was floating 7,000 feet above Colorado, at the mercy of the winds.
For hours on a workaday Thursday, a mesmerized America watched the shiny silvery disc spin slowly against a brilliant blue sky with puffy white clouds.
Emergency vehicles began trailing the balloon over two counties. The Air Force was contacted. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded some planes. And the gripped nation wondered: Was the boy in the balloon? Had he fallen out?
At last, the balloon floated down — a safe landing! — 50 miles from the Fort Collins home where it had been tethered.
But there was no boy.
And then, two hours later, he emerged from the attic in his home, where he had been hiding in fear.
The boy’s father, Richard Heene, said that the family was tinkering with the balloon Thursday and that he scolded his son Falcon for getting inside a battery compartment on the craft. He said Falcon’s brother Bradford, 10, had seen Falcon there before it took off, and that’s why they thought he was in the balloon when it rose into the sky.
But Falcon had fled after the scolding and was never in the balloon during its two-hour journey.
“I yelled at him. I’m really sorry I yelled at him,” Heene said as he hugged his son at a news conference Thursday.
“I was in the attic, and he scared me because he yelled at me,” Falcon said. “That’s why I went in the attic.”
Richard Heene denied that the whole thing was a big publicity stunt.
“That’s horrible after the crap we just went through,” he said. “No.”
But in a live interview with CNN, Falcon said he had heard his family calling his name.
“You did?” said the boy’s mother, Mayumi Heene.
“Why didn’t you come out?” Richard Heene asked.
Falcon answered, “You had said that we did this for a show.”Later, Richard Heene bristled when the family was asked to clarify and said he didn’t know what his son meant.
The family had appeared this year on “Wife Swap,” the ABC reality show where two mothers switch households for several days. On their episode, a risk-taking scientist swapped his wife with that from a safety-obsessed family.
Heene is an amateur scientist, he says on his MySpace page. In 2005, he “flew into Hurricane Wilma to take magnetic field measurements,” and “this year I rode a motorcycle into a mesocyclone.” He said he’d like to meet “real aliens from outer space and conduct a full interview with them.”
Thursday morning, Heene and two of his sons had been playing out back with the balloon when Bradford saw Falcon climb into a box on the bottom of the balloon, said Kathy Messick, a spokeswoman for the Larimer County sheriff.
The contraption took to the skies about 11 a.m. over northern Colorado. Within about 30 minutes, family members summoned authorities.
The Federal Aviation Administration began tracking the balloon through reports from pilots and air traffic control operations.
The Colorado Army National Guard scrambled an OH-58 Kiowa helicopter and a Black Hawk UH-60 to try to rescue the boy, possibly by lowering someone to the balloon. The helicopter flights alone cost about $14,500. The National Guard also was working with pilots of ultralight aircraft on the possibility of putting weights on the homemade craft to bring it down.
