Oct 15, 2009 10:05 pm US/Mountain
Missing Ft. Collins Boy Found Safe At Home
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (CBS4) ―
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Falcon Heene outside his home in Fort Collins Thursday afternoon.
CBS
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The balloon lands near Denver International Airport on Oct. 15, 2009.
KCNC-TV/CBS
A 6-year-old Fort Collins boy who was thought to have been in a large helium balloon that escaped from its tether at his home, was found in his family's garage attic. It turns out Falcon Heene had been hiding in a cardboard box the entire time.
"I was hiding because my dad yelled at me," Falcon told CBS4's Rick Sallinger. When asked why his father yelled at him, Falcon replied, "I was playing in the flying saucer."
The silver balloon, which looked like a flying saucer, apparently came loose just after 11 a.m. on Thursday and started flying. It landed in a field near Denver International Airport after being airborn for more than 2 hours and flying about 50 miles.
After a quick, frantic search of the balloon in the field emergency crews determined the missing boy was not inside. Larimer County sheriff's officials thought initially Heene might have climbed into a capsule that was part of the balloon and fallen out sometime after it took off.
Some search crews focused their efforts on the Platte Valley Airport in Weld County, where someone told police they saw something fall from the balloon while it was in the air. Homes in the boy's neighborhood were also searched and yellow crime-scene tape was placed around the home.
Investigators had searched the house twice, and interviewed one of Falcon's older brothers several times.
Officers on horseback and on ATVs were involved in the search and helicopters were part of the effort.
That all ended at about 4 p.m. when Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden was in the middle of a news conference and was told the boy had been found safe. "He's at the house," Alderden said. An investigator said the boy had apparently been in the attic the whole time.
The boy's father, Richard Heene, said the family was tinkering with the balloon Thursday and that he scolded Falcon for getting inside a compartment on the craft. He said Falcon's brother had seen him inside the compartment before it took off and that's why they thought he was in there when it launched.
"This little guy got inside of it, or I thought he did, anyway, according to Brad. He said he videotaped it, and we watched it back and sure enough he got in. But obviously he got out, so we don't know. He says he was hiding in the attic. It's because I yelled at him. I'm really sorry I yelled at him," said Heene as he hugged his son outside the family's Fort Collins home Thursday afternoon.
When asked what will happen as a result of the search, Heene replied, "We don't scold our children that way. We just sat down and actually had a family talk about no more hiding. No more hiding. They've got hiding places that I didn't even know about," Heene told CBS4's Rick Sallinger.
Heene said the balloon wasn't tethered properly, and "it was a mishap. I'm not going to lay blame on anybody."
It wasn't immediately clear how much the search operation cost. Capt. Troy Brown said the Black Hawk helicopter was in the air for nearly three hours, and the Kiowa helicopter was airborne for about one hour. The Black Hawk costs about $4,600 an hour to fly, the Kiowa is $700 an hour.
The Larimer County Sheriff said the Heene family will not be asked to pay for the rescue efforts.
Neighbor Bob Licko said he was leaving home when he heard commotion in the backyard of the family. He said he saw two boys on the roof with a camera, commenting about their brother. "One of the boys yelled to me that his brother was way up in the air," Licko said.
Investigators had searched the house twice, and interviewed one of Heene's older brothers several times. Alderden said the brother was "very adamant" when he reported that the boy floated off in the balloon, and the parents "were besides themselves with worry."
The balloon was owned by the boy's parents, Richard and Mayumi Heene, and tethered behind the house.
In a 2007 interview with CBS4 Richard Heene described being an amateur storm chaser and talked about how he uses a motorcycle to drive into areas where tornadoes are striking. He said he once flew a plane 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 Heene family has appeared on ABC's reality TV show "Wife Swap" twice, most recently in March, and are described on the show's Web site as a group that likes to take risks. According to the ABC Web site: When the Heene family aren't chasing storms, they 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.
The family also has a channel on YouTube, which attracted comments Thursday, some critical of the parents and some noting the so-called irony of the missing boy's name.
(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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