View Full Version : Big brother claims little brother flew away in giant balloon?
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20091015/US.Boy.in.Balloon/
anybody hear about this?
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — A homemade balloon aircraft floated away from a yard in Colorado after a 6-year-old boy was seen climbing inside, setting off a frantic scramble by the military and law enforcement before the balloon slowly touched without the boy inside.
It's not clear whether the boy fell out of the balloon or was never actually inside the craft. Sheriff's officials said from the beginning that he was in the balloon, and authorities feverishly searched for any sign of the child on the ground, including in the neighborhood where he lives.
The bizarre scene played out live on television as the balloon rotated slowly in the wind, tipping precariously at times before gliding to the ground after more than two hours in the air.
Cathy Davis of the Larimer County Sheriff's Department told reporters the balloon was owned by the boy's parents, Richard and Mayumi Heene, and tethered behind the family's home. She said two sons were playing outside when the older boy saw the younger one, identified as Falcon, go into a compartment at the bottom of the balloon and fly away.
"We'll just have to respond the best we can," Davis said. "This is a first and we'll do what we need to do."
She said the family was in contact with experts to provide details on the craft, including what it's made of and what might happen when it reached the ground.
In a 2007 interview with The Denver Post, Richard Heene described becoming a storm chaser after a tornado ripped off a roof where he was working as a contractor and said he once flew a place around Hurricane Wilma's perimeter in 2005.
Pursuing bad weather was a family activity with the children coming along as the father sought evidence to prove his theory that rotating storms create their own magnetic fields.
Although Richard said he has no specialized training, they had a computer tracking system in their car and a special motorcycle.
The Colorado Army National Guard sent an OH-58 Kiowa helicopter and was preparing to send a Black Hawk UH-60 to try to rescue the boy, possibly by lowering someone to the balloon. They also were working with pilots of ultralight aircraft on the possibility of putting weights on the homemade craft to weigh it down.
But the balloon landed on its own in a dirt field. Sheriff's deputies secured it to keep it in place, even tossing shovelfuls of dirt on one edge.
Northbound departures at Denver International Airport were shut down as a precaution to prevent against a possible collision between the balloon and an airliner, said Lyle Burrington, an air traffic controller at the Federal Aviation Administration's radar center in Longmont, Colo.
Air traffic controllers warned planes in the area about the balloon, Burrington said. It helped that the day was clear, enabling pilots to see the balloon well, he said.
Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency tracked the balloon through reports from pilots.
"We were sitting eating, out looking where they normally shoot off hot air balloons. My husband said he saw something. It went over our rooftop. Then we saw the big round balloonish thing, it was spinning," said neighbor Lisa Eklund.
"By the time I saw it, it traveled pretty fast," she said.
The story gripped the television news networks, which set aside other programming to follow the balloon and speculate on the safety of the boy.
"It's got everybody freaked out," said Fox News Channel's Shepard Smith, "and why wouldn't it?"
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thomas M-4
10-15-09, 16:03
Waching the news right now.
Looks to be has if the boy fell out .:(
MarshallDodge
10-15-09, 16:06
I pray they find the boy safe and sound.
is the "big brother" seriously the only witness to the boy ever being in the thing to begin with?
maybe i'm just a suspicious person, but it seems more likely to me that big brother accidentally broke little brother's neck or shot him or something, hid the body, and let the balloon go.
nah'mea?
Thomas M-4
10-15-09, 16:10
is the "big brother" seriously the only witness to the boy ever being in the thing to begin with?
maybe i'm just a suspicious person, but it seems more likely to me that big brother accidentally broke little brother's neck or shot him or something, hid the body, and let the balloon go.
nah'mea?
I dont know they say there was a another section to the balloon that might have fallen off.
Defiantly weird:confused:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7Bnyo5AxD0&NR=1
Thomas M-4
10-15-09, 16:19
Looks to small to lift a 6 year old but what do I know LOL.
This story is bizarre, like a way less enjoyable version of UP
diving dave
10-15-09, 17:08
This world is getting stranger by the minute..thing looks like a UFO. Maybe its the mother ship and its taking Nancey Pelosi back....
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20091015/US.Boy.in.Balloon/
anybody hear about this?
I was in my office (Colorado) when one of the mechanics came in asking if I had seen “the boy in the balloon”. :confused:
I was ready to run out of the hanger to see what was going on until someone explained a little further what had happened.
apparently there was a basket attached to the thing- that's probably what the boy would have gotten into. as somebody said something fell off the balloon, the basket obviously was not longer attached soon after takeoff
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20091015/US.Boy.in.Balloon/
Larimer County sheriff's spokeswoman Kathy Messick said one of the boy's two older brothers saw 6-year-old Falcon Heene get into a box that was attached to the balloon with pegs. The box was not found when the balloon landed; several people reported seeing something fall from the balloon while it was in the air.
The balloon was owned by the boy's parents, Richard and Mayumi Heene, who are storm chasers and also appeared on the ABC reality show "Wife Swap."
Kevin Kuretich, of the Colorado Division of Emergency Management, said authorities were searching the ground along the path of balloon. "We're searching for the boy from the point where this took off to where it landed," Kuretich said.
He said the craft had some kind of electric power unit which was run by double-C batteries. He said the balloon did seem to be big enough to carry a 6-year-old.
Messick said investigators are looking into every possibility, including whether the boy was ever in the balloon. Yellow crime-scene tape was placed around the home.
A Kiowa helicopter was being equipped with an infrared camera to fly at 1,000 feet and help search the area where something reportedly fell from the balloon, Army National Guard Capt. Michael Odgers said.
The camera detects temperature differences and could spot a body temperature if the boy were somewhere on the ground.
Jason Humbert saw the balloon land. He said he had gotten a call from his mother in Texas who told him about the balloon. He said he was in a field checking on an oil well when he found himself surrounded by police who had been chasing the balloon, which came to a rest 12 miles northeast of Denver International Airport.
Business_Casual
10-15-09, 17:28
Has anyone explained why the boys weren't in school?
M_P
geminidglocker
10-15-09, 17:38
They found him alive. He was hiding in a box in the house.:) Sounds like he needs his hide tanned for pulling such a prank.
I knew this story was full of hot air!
They found him alive. He was hiding in a box in the house.:) Sounds like he needs his hide tanned for pulling such a prank.
In the back of my mind, I wondered if the kid was really in that thing.
On the way home, listening to Sean Hannity, a caller did the math on the cubic ft. capacity of that balloon based off the dimensions the reporters gave out. The caller to Sean’s show said that the balloon could only lift about 6 lbs.
Has anyone explained why the boys weren't in school?
M_P
Out west... "hunting break" is fairly common. They usually get the Thurs and Fri off of the opening day of hunting.
Anyone else wonder if they grew accustom to attention after being on the reality TV show and this was all one big stunt?
Anyone else wonder if they grew accustom to attention after being on the reality TV show and this was all one big stunt?
Frau Quib just said the same thing.
Thomas M-4
10-15-09, 18:27
Glade that everything turned out fine.
well good... neither 8,000 foot fall nor big brother killed the little ****er. now dad can.
i sure hope these people arent wacky enough to pull a freaken publicity stunt like that
i sure hope these people arent wacky enough to pull a freaken publicity stunt like that
I saw them on the show...unfortunately they just might be that whacky, if they were represented accurately on TV (which is always a big "if").
They found him alive. He was hiding in a box in the house.:)
Obama is being credited for the find...:D:D
Seriously, I think the whole deal was a hoax / set up by his whacko folks...I hear there is a book deal in the works.:confused:
Obama is being credited for the find...:D:D
Seriously, I think the whole deal was a hoax / set up by his whacko folks...I hear there is a book deal in the works.:confused:
You can tell just by looking at the thing that it was not carrying any sort of weight. People get so worked up over the silliest things.
I'll admit I was duped at first bolt. Was watching it live with the wife and we both thought it was something our boy would pull.;)
Once I saw a person next to it and got a scale of the balloon...how gently it touched down with no mass, my radar went off.
If I was the kid, They would still be looking for me. :D
geminidglocker
10-15-09, 22:20
You can tell just by looking at the thing that it was not carrying any sort of weight. People get so worked up over the silliest things.
When I was younger I always dreamed of doing one of those balloon/lawnchair deals. I saw Mythbusters and it explained the feasability of such an endeavor. The amount of helium needed to lift a human is ridiculous.
Funny story: I'm on my way to meet a group of 8 friends for our usual wings Thursday at Buffalo Wild Wings. I hear on the radio something about a boy in a balloon in the air in Fort Collins which is near me and where I was meeting friends for lunch. I turn my BB scanner on the local Sheriff's band to pick up the squak on the situation. I text ahead to BWW to tell my buddy to do the same to hear about this crazy situation that's going on. I get to the restaurant a few minutes later and everyone at the table points to the TVs where CNN has live video of it. Crazy stuff. Here's the best part though, the first thing out of my mouth was 'That kid ain't in there. He was effing around and cut the thing loose and then ran inside to hide in the closet because he knew he was in deep stuff.' This was before the balloon ever even touched down. Almost an hour later when we're getting ready to leave the balloon is on the ground and the scanner ap on our BB says there's nobody in it and CNN reported that a couple minutes later. As soon as we found out that he wasn't in there every at the table got quiet and looked at me. I said, see? Then the talk was that someone the next county over called and reported seeing something falling from the balloon so they were afraid the kid bailed. The funny thing is I wasn't even thinking about that because I knew it was a matter of time before they found him safe at home. Weird.
PRGGodfather
10-16-09, 10:36
Smelling more and more like a planned hoax from the beginning. Family seems to like risk and publicity.
I could be wrong, but from the beginning it wasn't passing the smell test, and this is starting to remind me of that Octomom atrocity...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_boy_in_balloon
FORT COLLINS, Colo. – The father of a 6-year-old boy who was thought to be in a helium balloon that floated away said Friday accusations that the ordeal was a publicity stunt are "extremely pathetic." The sheriff said he will be asking more questions.
Richard Heene and his family made the rounds on all three television networks on Friday, and the boy at the center of the saga got sick twice when he and his father were asked during separate interviews what he meant when he said that "we did this for a show."
Falcon Heene vanished around the time his family's homemade helium balloon floated away from their home on Thursday, setting off a national uproar as authorities scoured the plains of northern Colorado for the youngster. Turns out, he was hiding in the rafters of the family's garage.
During a live interview with CNN Thursday night, Falcon said he had heard his family calling his name but didn't come out of the attic hiding place because his father "had said that we did this for a show." The boys' parents — Richard and Mayumi Heene — are storm chasers who appeared twice in the ABC reality show "Wife Swap."
Sheriff Jim Alderden said Friday his investigators believe there was no hoax, but investigators will seek a new interview with the family after the CNN broadcast to clarify the statement.
Alderden told KUSA-TV in Denver on Friday that he didn't know what to make of Falcon's comments, but pointed out they came after hours of dealing with media questions. Alderden said investigators, trained to look at body language and verbal communication for signs of deception, were at the Heene home during the whole ordeal and believe they were telling the truth. Despite that, he said investigators would re-interview the family because of the comment.
During an ABC interview on Friday Falcon was asked why he said he was hiding "for a show," at which point he said: "Mom, I feel like I'm going to vomit." He then left the room with his mother and could be heard gagging.
During a live interview on NBC's "Today" that aired simultaneously, Falcon threw up into a container when his father was answering the same question.
At the beginning of the ABC interview, Falcon was asked how he's doing. "I feel good so far," he answered.
Richard Heene lambasted speculation that the ordeal was a hoax.
"I went through such a roller coaster of emotions yesterday, to have people say that, I think, is extremely pathetic," he told ABC.
"I'm not selling anything. This is what we do all the time."
It was five hours from the time the oldest of three sons reported that Falcon, the youngest, had climbed into a saucer-shaped balloon that had drifted off, setting off a search that included military helicopters and a plan to either lower a person to the craft or place weights on the balloon to bring it down. Officials rerouted planes around the balloon's flight path and briefly shut down Denver International Airport.
Heene said the family was tinkering with the balloon Thursday and that he scolded Falcon for getting inside a compartment on the craft. It was designed to hover about 50 to 100 feet from the ground but it broke loose from its tether.
The family videotaped the episode. In a segment shown on national TV, the father kicked the ground when the balloon took off.
One of Falcon's two brothers said he had seen him inside the compartment before it took off and that's why they thought he was in there when it launched. But the boy had gone to the garage rafters at some point and was never in the balloon during its two-hour, 50-mile journey through two counties.
"I was in the attic and he scared me because he yelled at me," Falcon said, referring to his father. "That's why I went in the attic."
The Heenes aren't the types to shy from attention, with boys featured in a rap music video on YouTube and the whole family appearing on the ABC show "Wife Swap."
The show promoted the Heene family as storm chasers who also "devote their time to scientific experiments that include looking for extraterrestrials and building a research-gathering flying saucer to send into the eye of the storm."
During a live interview with CNN, Falcon said he had heard his family calling his name.
"You did?" his mother asked.
"Why didn't you come out?" Richard Heene said.
Falcon answered, "You had said that we did this for a show."
Heene told NBC his son was confused by the question, being only 6 years old, and had shown television reporters his hiding spot, confusing that with a show.
Honestly, could this story get any more pathetic/funny?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByCcxrre6HY
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