Colorado sheriff: "balloon boy" case was a hoax
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/0...s_usa_aircraft
Colorado sheriff: "balloon boy" case was a hoax
1 hour, 43 minutes ago
DENVER (Reuters) - The flight of a home-made helium balloon that sparked a frantic rescue attempt for the young boy thought to be aboard was a publicity-seeking hoax, a Colorado sheriff said on Sunday.
Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden said the parents of 6-year-old Falcon Heene would likely face charges in the bizarre incident, which riveted television viewers across the United States for more than two hours on Thursday.
The airship took to the skies on Thursday morning and Richard and Mayumi Heene claimed that their son had climbed aboard, touching off a massive search and rescue operation as the odd silver craft drifted for 50 miles, trailed by U.S. National Guard helicopters. The boy was found not in the flying saucer-shaped craft but safe at home.
"It has been determined that this is a hoax, that it was a publicity stunt," Alderden told a press conference.
"We believe we have evidence at this point to indicate that it was a publicity stunt done with the hopes of better marketing themselves for a reality television show at some point in the future," he said.
Alderden said the parents would likely be charged with conspiracy, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, making a false police report and attempting to influence a public servant.
He said investigators believed that Falcon Heene and his brothers, who are 8 and 10, were "100 percent involved" in the caper but were not expected to face criminal charges because of their age.
"On the bizarre meter, this rates a 10," Alderden said.
Authorities had considered desperate measures to somehow bring the balloon down safely before it slowly began to deflate on its own and landed softly in a wheat field near Denver.
'PLAN WAS TO LAUNCH A SPACECRAFT'
Rescuers who raced to the balloon and found it empty then began to scour the countryside for Falcon, fearing that he had fallen out -- until the family announced that he was safe and had been hiding in a garage attic.
Questions were raised after a CNN interviewer told Richard Heene to ask his son why he had stayed in hiding so long when searchers were desperately calling his name.
The boy responded: "You guys (his parents) said that, um, we did this for the show."
The Heene family has appeared on the ABC television reality show "Wife Swap" in which families swap mothers to deal with family problems.
They gave interviews on a series of U.S. morning shows on Friday to emphatically deny the incident was staged. Falcon vomited repeatedly on camera.
Alderden said his investigators determined that the incident was a hoax after interviewing all five members of the Heene family and searching the home.
"This has been a planned event for some two weeks," he said. "The plan was to launch the spacecraft for a reality TV. The plan was to create a situation where it appeared that Falcon was in the craft to gain publicity. To obtain notoriety to obtain publicity for a television show."
The sheriff, who on Friday had largely dismissed suggestions from reporters that the balloon flight might be a hoax, said that he had, to some extent, manipulated the media in order to gain the trust of the Heenes.
"I bumped against the line of misleading the media," he said. "I hope I didn't cross that line. I bumped up against it by perhaps overstating our assurance or belief that there was nothing behind this."
(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb, editing by Jackie Frank)
