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[UPDATE, 10 p.m. with video after the jump]: "Balloon" boy Falcon Heene and family appear on CNN; Falcon tells his parents, CNN and the world that he didn't come out because "we did this for a show."
3:10 p.m. : ABC's Denver affiliate reports, "A 6-year-old boy is floating over northeastern Colorado in a homebuilt balloon and authorities are racing to try and rescue him. The balloon, in the shape of a flying saucer is covered in foil and filled with helium. The craft's dimensions are 20-feet across and 5-feet high." Somehow, the balloon became untethered—the boy and his father "had apparently been working on the aircraft for some time." The authorities are tracking it and it's possible it could remain airborne for 12 hours. There's live video of the balloon—which looks to be going pretty fast at times—on MyFoxNY and CNN.
UPDATE 3:38 p.m.: The balloon landed and the boy was not inside! The child, identified as Falcon Heene, was seen getting into the gondola (and he apparently untied it from its anchor); it's unclear what happened to him. The Denver Post notes that the boy's father "Richard Heene is an amateur scientist based out of Fort Collins. He and his partners call themselves the 'psyience detectives.' Heene is a storm chaser who collects data to prove that rotating storms create their own magnetic fields."
Apparently the Heenes were on Wife Swap: "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."
According to the Lede, the Larimer County emergency manager Erik Nilsson said, "That’s good news and that’s bad news. He was no longer in danger from a balloon crash. The bad news is we don’t know where he is." Dozens of law enforcement officers are looking for Falcon and Nilsson added, "I am hoping the scenario is that he is scared of punishment and does not want to be found."
UPDATE 6:17 p.m.: Thank goodness—the Denver Post now reports that Falcon Heene found in his home's attic. Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden said, "He was found in a box in the attic above the garage," and said that his parents didn't realize he was there, "They thought he was missing." The boy's older (9-year-old) brother had told his parents and investigators that Falcon was in the balloon that floated away.
Also, apparently Falcon and his brothers are not pussified:
UPDATE 10:10 p.m.: "Balloon" Boy and his family were just interviewed by CNN's Wolf Blitzer. When asked by Blitzer and his parents why he didn't come out from the garage attic, Falcon replied: "Um. You guys said that, hrm, we did this for a show."
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I had the check my caledar to make sure it wasn't April 1.
Publicity stunt/hoax. The kid was on WIFE SWAP and here's his music video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBWJXXgaYBo
My guess is he'll soon be performing as "Balloon Boy" at a mall near you!
HEY! I first posted the music video angle here in the comments, and you guys just snagged it like that without even "a commenter pointed out" like you do with other stories? Low!
Nothing to see here, folks. Just Disney trying to promote their 3D BluRay release of "Up".
i see the floating disc, is the kid inside it or what
Yeah, there's a little basket under the balloon which the boy is sitting inside of.
PS it looks like it was going down and the cameras panned away .. and switched to previous footage
holy shit! GET HIM! hope this thing eases down...
helicopter fly over and push him down...
phew - he's down.
No kid..... who called that in? the Dad?
where's the kid?
gee whiz, that's the best science project ever!
This is so weird. He's not in it. His name is FALCON. Whaaaat the fuuuuuck?
No one is inside the balloon.
no kid inside
Breaking news: Monserate found not guilty except for one misdemeanor
That's too horrible to imagine - 8000 feet up. If that kid really was in the balloon when it went up...
So I know this is kind of the elephant in the room, but where's the kid?
that's one way to tell your kid to get lost.
shenanigans.
MSNBC says they were on Wife Swap last year. Good lord. So basically at this point the kid is either hiding or dead? If my parents were on Wife Swap, I might be either...
The kid jumped out, but noones looking for him b/c they all followed the balloon.
South Park couldnt even make this up....
But they sure will cover it.
he probably fell out early on and they didnt catch it. what a shitty way to go
Little Falcon obviously faked his own death.
how would he get out of the balloon, though? it looked pretty sealed up.
He went to the future. Flight of the navigator bitches
it's like db cooper without the money. or the bourbon and the black suit.
family is a bunch of attention whore know-it-alls, doesn't surprise me at all. They probably have him at home in the closet.
close. lol
Hopefully it's like that Simpsons episode when Bart was in his room the whole time.
Hate to be cynical without knowing if the kid's okay, but if they were on Wife Swap they might just be looking for more camera time.
Not to worry earthlings. We have come from lightyears away and to capture from you yes. Many waters. Teh child you speak of is our link to your planet. Zorgon and me CharlieMan are aware of your interplanetary probes and we will succeed.
If the kid is stuck inside the balloon and the balloon is filled with helium, he must be laughing his ass off.
an absolutely tragic story, no doubt about it, but wtf does it have to do with "new york city food, arts, and events"?
gothamist: stick to your purpose or risk diluting it.
What exactly would be the possible consequences of taking that "risk"?
Losing out on the highest number of pageviews of anything posted here today? Oooh, scary!
Nothing ever happens in New York. Stop crying, nerd.
PREDICTION: Both kids were playing with balloon, older one tells younger to get in and he will hold tether line while he floats up 20 feet or so and gust of wind rips it from older boys hand. Young guy realizes this at altitude of 50-75 feet and jumps out or tris to slide down rope, he'll be found a few thousand feet from home.
Six year olds do the darndest things.
Blame the parents.
No way that balloon could have lifted off with a 50+lbs kid in there. A Mythbusters episode showed that to lift a 44lbs kid even a few feet into the air, it would take 3500 helium filled party balloons, much much more than what that thing looked like it could hold.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8i7ESjCw3o
My bet is that the kid is hiding somewhere.
150 large party balloons carrying an adult man, a lawn chair, and three 15-gallon barrels full of Kool-Aid:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-080705-lawn-chair-balloonist-pg,0,3417425.photogallery
Granted, bigger than typical balloons but certainly not bigger than 3500 regular balloons. Of course, the weight of the balloons themselves has to be taken into account; this "UFO" probably weighed a lot less empty than those toy balloons did.
Some rough calculations based on the dimensions the Times gave of 20 feet diameter by 7 feet tall give me a volume of about 1500 cubic feet. The lifting capacity of 1500 cubic feet of helium is 92 pounds, so it's plausible. The difference between this and the Mythbusters story is that individual party balloons have a lot of wasted space between them, not to mention a lot of surface area in terms of latex.
Maybe the boy released the balloon accidentally, knew he was wrong for doing so, knew his dad would be mad and ran away to avoid being punished.
Not too far fetched.
Come on people this is Colorado, the state that is working very hard to be the new nuthouse state.
Read the biggest WTF headline news in the last fifteen years and who comes out on top? Colorado. Lets start with Jon Benet and move on to Columbine and etc. etc. etc. The state totally sucks. Not as much as Jersey, but it's right up there.
This sounds like a Jules Verne sort of story...except for the kid.
he's alive
I love this story.
follow the money
What's the NYC connection?
I don't read Gothamist to see every single national/international story repeated. Come on, guys.
Was the balloon even capable of holding that much weight?
gee 48 comments before you, somebody likes the story.
51, I think everyone "likes" the story in general, just don't understand why Gothamist is covering it when it has nothing to do with New York. Which I had understood the "point" of Gothamist was-- NYC local/regional goings-on. It isn't like we aren't all reading about it on every other website already, anyway.
White people is Kraaaaazzzyyyy.
We're all lucky it wasn't another kid in a well. White people would be going apeshit about that.
brandonz is a dickweed.
Gothamist should just add "and whatever else we find interesting" to that mission statement, so we wouldn't get the pointless "this has nothing to do with NYC" comments all the time.
On the other hand, a pageview is a pageview, so those comments are helping to pay the bills.
EdEx above got it exactly right.
And they are already on TV being interviewed by CNN.
They say the kid fell asleep in the attic in a box, while we were glued to our TVs thinking he was in the balloon.
"I let Daddy's balloon loose, Im in big trouble, I think its nap time'
Maaaaaaan this kid better get an old fashioned ass whoopin.
I would go down to shitfuck Colorado to do it myself but I can't find my weather balloon.
There's something very disturbing about this family. They're like the Osmonds of weird-ass experimental balloon crap.
I hope that the authorities charge this family for the cost of the balloon chase!
OMG I FUCKING CALLED THIS! (See above)
Attention-grubbing maniac media whores! Poor kids, too.
Did you see how freakin nervous the dad got just now when the kid blows his cover?
So how is that Blitzer said that he heard what the kid says, but just went on with the interview as if it meant nothing.
Already had the questions written out, I guess, and couldn't come up with any new ones on his own.
I think it was rather important for Blitzer to not grill the family and the poor kid, who is already obviously being used and abused by his attention-whore parents, on live tv, in the heat of the moment. They're getting theirs anyway!
Lock 'em all up. The kid, too.
Sully would have known what to do.
www.forgotten-ny.com
Apparently Blitzer did come back and ask about it after a break. Still didn't push it, though, and pretty much apologized for having brought it up... after the father avoided the question and went on about how appalled he was to be asked that.
http://www.thecelebritytruth.com/hoax-claim-balloon-boys-dad-agitated-appalled/0010692
"Man...."
and then you notice how itchy and distracted Dad looks afterwards??
goddamn I hate these people.
Blitzer was just being a modern journalist. If you can't ask politicians tough questions, how would you justify doing it to these even-more-pathetic sons o' bitches?
What a joke of a non story. Don't we have more important issues and problems to discuss?
that kid needs a serious butt whoopin doing what he did. The amount of recourses, manpower, time and money wasted on his prank.
I totally agree this white trash family are attention whores. Too bad the kid didn't fall out of the balloon. One less entry point into the gene pool.
dont think for a second that little kid had anything to do with this......facking media whores